Meeting the information needs of adult daughters of women with early breast cancer. Patients and health care professionals as information providers.

Abstract

This study explored the information needs of adult daughters whose mothers had early breast cancer and illustrated the information flows between the daughters and two information providers: patients and health care professionals (HCPs). Participants were 97 daughters, who completed a 30-time self-administered questionnaire, a tool designed to identify the information needs of daughters and their communication channels. Daughters also completed the Miller Behavioral Style Scale, a scale used to determine the information-seeking behavior of individuals under threat. Descriptive statistics revealed that the information flows between women with breast cancer and daughters participating in this study were good. Most of the daughters received information from their mothers and asked their mothers questions. Few daughters thought their mothers avoided giving them information. The vast majority of the daughters, however, sought information from sources other than their mothers, indicating that the mothers alone did not satisfy their information needs. More than half of the daughters participating in this study accompanied their mothers to their medical consultations and received information from HCPs. Logistic regression indicated that the communication flows between patients, HCPs, and adult daughters of women with breast cancer depended on a number of factors, in particular, on the amount of communication desired by women with breast cancer.