Abstract: Objective: To systematically review the needs assessment tools for family caregivers of patients with cancer. Methods: We searched 9 databases. Original studies of the needs assessment tools for family caregivers of patients with cancer were screened. Included tools were appraised using the quality criteria for judging the psychometric properties. And needs themes were extracted based on the original tools' dimension contents. All of the needs themes were clustered based on Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory. Results: We collected 14 needs assessment tools, extracted 27 needs themes and clustered in 6 needs levels. Among them, the most widely involved needs were self-actualization needs, love and belonging needs and cognitive needs. Esteem needs and safty needs were less tested, while aesthetic needs were omitted. The content validity, internal consistency and construct validity of the assessment tools were appraised as "good" accounted for 43%, 21% and 14% respectively. Conclusion: The content of the needs assessment tool is relatively rich, but it should be further expanded, and the overall level of its psychometric properties needs to be improved further.

Key words: needs assessment tool; family caregiver; caregiver need; systematic review; cancer