Distress mediates the relationship between cognitive appraisal of medical care and benefit finding/posttraumatic growth in long-term cancer survivors.

Cancer survivors' medical care appraisal is associated with their perceptions of BF and PTG through distress. Therefore, distress screening could be part of the regular workup to identify distressed cancer survivors who are not satisfied with medical care; these survivors may benefit from interventions to reduce distress and increase BF and PTG.