Abstract
BackgroundInformation is vital to cancer patients. Physician–patient communication in oncology presents specific challenges. The aim of this study was to evaluate self-reported information of cancer patients in ambulatory care at a comprehensive cancer centre and examine its possible association with patients’ demographic and clinical characteristics.Patients and methodsThis study included adult patients with solid tumours undergoing chemotherapy at the Institute Jules Bordet’s Day Hospital over a ten-day period. EORTC QLQ-C30 and QLQ-INFO25 questionnaires were administered. Demographic and clinical data were collected. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used.Results101 (99%) fully completed the questionnaires. They were mostly Belgian (74.3%), female (78.2%), with a mean age of 56.9 ± 12.8 years. The most frequent tumour was breast cancer (58.4%). Patients were well-informed about the disease and treatments, but presented unmet information domains. The Jules Bordet patients desired more information on treatment side effects, long-term outcome, nutrition, and recurrence symptoms. Patients on clinical trials reported having received less information about their disease and less written information than patients outside clinical trials. Higher information levels were associated with higher quality of life (QoL) scores and higher patient satisfaction.ConclusionPatients were satisfied with the information they received and this correlated with higher QoL, but they still expressed unmet information wishes. Additional studies are required to investigate the quality of the information received by patients enrolled in clinical trials.
Highlights
Patients reporting good communication with their doctors are more likely to be satisfied with their care, share pertinent information for accurate diagnosis, follow advice, and adhere to treatments [1,2,3]
Surveys consistently show that patients want better communication with their doctors [2]. They show that communication problems correlate positively with patients’ distress and anxiety, causing anticipatory nausea and vomiting during chemotherapy, criticism about information received during hospital visits, and even low rates of recruitment into clinical trials [2, 3]
Our study showed that patients attending the Day Hospital at Institute Jules Bordet (IJB) presented higher global information than the validation study sample [11], that their wishes to receive more information were lower and the helpfulness of the overall information received were higher [11]
Summary
Patients reporting good communication with their doctors are more likely to be satisfied with their care, share pertinent information for accurate diagnosis, follow advice, and adhere to treatments [1,2,3]. Surveys consistently show that patients want better communication with their doctors [2] They show that communication problems correlate positively with patients’ distress and anxiety, causing anticipatory nausea and vomiting during chemotherapy, criticism about information received during hospital visits, and even low rates of recruitment into clinical trials [2, 3]. Earlier studies evaluating the delivery of information according to patients’ needs recognised that giving patient-tailored information contributed to lowering their anxiety levels [4] Such studies have shown that doctors’ decision-making on giving information is based on subjective criteria with a strong cultural influence; it correlates poorly with paired patients’ assessments and causes the physician to attain a conservative attitude [4,5,6]. The aim of this study was to evaluate self-reported information of cancer patients in ambulatory care at a comprehensive cancer centre and examine its possible association with patients’ demographic and clinical characteristics
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