Evidence suggests patients delay reporting symptoms of neutropenic sepsis (NS) despite the risk to their life. This study aimed to elicit factors that contribute to delayed patient reporting of NS symptoms.
A constructivist grounded theory study used observations of chemotherapy consultations (13 hours) and 31 in-depth interviews to explore beliefs, experiences and behaviors related to NS. Participants included women with breast cancer, their carers (partners, family or friends) and clinicians. An explanation for patient delays was developed through theoretical sampling of participants to explore emerging areas of interest and through constant comparison of data and their coding. This entailed iterative and concurrent data collection and analysis. Data were collected until saturation.
All patients who developed NS type symptoms delayed presenting to hospital (2.5 hours - 8 days), sometimes repeatedly. Moderators of delay included metastatic disease, bereavement, fatalism, religious beliefs and quality of relationships with clinicians. There was an interplay of behaviours between clinicians, patients and carers where they subconsciously conspired to underplay the seriousness and possibility of NS occurring.
Findings have implications for health risk communication and development of holistic service models.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 21. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 02 February 2017.
All research outputs
#2,281,648
of 34,410,798 outputs
Outputs from Psycho-Oncology
#226
of 3,243 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#34,111
of 459,734 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Psycho-Oncology
#2
of 34 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,410,798 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 93rd percentile: it's in the top 10% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 3,243 research outputs from this source. They typically receive more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 8.7. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 93% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 459,734 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 92% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 34 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 94% of its contemporaries.
