Oncology team perception and patient experience discordances in triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) care.

Abstract

e19176 Background: In TNBC, ensuring patients understand their treatment options and engaging them in shared decision-making (SDM) is vital to patient centered care; however, system-, team-, and individual-level barriers may challenge optimal SDM. As part of a quality improvement, accredited initiative, we identified areas of discordance between oncology healthcare professionals (HCP) perception and actual patient reported experiences. Methods: From 02/2019 – 10/2019, we administered surveys to assess challenges, barriers, attitudes, and experiences of HCP who care for patients with TNBC (N = 77) and their patients with TNBC (N = 65) at 6 community oncology practices. Results: Despite indications of high levels of SDM – 86% of patients indicated that they are always or mostly involved with treatment decisions – survey responses highlight discordances. For example, when asked to identify the most influential factors to patient treatment choice, HCP most commonly indicated side effects (94%), while patients most commonly indicated quality of life (48%). Additionally, when asked to identify the side effect of greatest concern to patients, 61% of patients indicated alopecia, while 45% of HCP indicated gastrointestinal (GI) distress. While both HCP and their patients indicate that the oncology team is the most useful source of patient education, HCP underestimated the extent to which patients rely on their primary care providers (PCPs). Patients and HCP each identified limited time as a barrier to SDM, but patients indicated not knowing what to ask, while HCP indicated that low health literacy was the top barrier to SDM. 31% of patients and their care team identified that improvements in discussions about realistic prognosis were vital to improved care. Conclusions: These survey findings reveal discordances between oncology HCP’s perceptions and patient reported experiences when receiving treatment for TNBC. These findings may highlight areas for improvement in co-productive patient-centered care. [Table: see text]