The association between physician trust and prostate specific antigen screening: Implications for shared decision making.

Abstract

13 Background: Most cancer organizations recommend shared decision making for PSA screening, a process relying on a trusting relationship between patient and physician. The objective of this study was to assess the degree to which an individual’s trust in cancer information from their physician compared to internet-based information impacts the likelihood of receiving PSA-screening. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study (2011-2014) of the Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS), a survey of people living in the US. The primary exposure was degree of trust in cancer information from participant’s physician (CIP). The secondary exposure was degree of trust in cancer information from the internet (CII). The primary outcome was patient-reported receipt of PSA-screening. The Cochran-Armitage test was used to identify significant trends in the primary outcome, across levels of trust. A multivariable logistic regression model assessed the association between CIP and CII with PSA-screening, adjusted for a priori covariates. Results: Among 5069 eligible respondents, 3,606 (71.1%) reported trusting CIP ‘a lot’, 1,186 (23.4%) ‘some’, 219 (4.3%) ‘a little’, and 58 (1.1%) ‘not at all’. 2,655 (52.4%) men received PSA-screening. The degree of trust in CIP was strongly associated with the likelihood of receiving PSA-screening: among men who reported ‘a lot’ of trust, 54.9% underwent screening, 48.6% ‘some’ trust, 38.4% ‘a little’ trust, and 27.6% among men ‘not at all’ trusting their physician (trend p < 0.0001). The degree to which men trusted CII was also associated with having received PSA-screening (p = 0.005), albeit with an insignificant trend (p = 0.07). After multivariable adjustment, these significant results persisted for degree of CIP trust (vs ‘a lot’: ‘some’ OR 0.80, 95%CI 0.66-0.97; ‘a little’ OR 0.61, 95%CI 0.41-0.90; ‘not at all’ OR 0.33, 95%CI 0.15-0.73), but not for trust in CII. Conclusions: The level of trust an individual has in their physician is strongly associated with undergoing PSA-screening. As rationale implementation of PSA screening requires shared decision-making, the level of physician trust has implications for dissemination of PSA-screening guidelines.