Contacting a doctor for advice when experiencing a potential cancer symptom is an important step in early diagnosis, but barriers to consultation are commonly reported. Understanding barriers to consulting in primary care within the cancer context provides opportunities to improve earlier diagnosis of cancer AIM: To investigate patients' GP consultation preferences when presented with a potential cancer symptom, and to describe whether these preferences are mediated by variable levels of cancer risk.
A UK-wide online survey of adults ≥50 years old, using quota sampling to reflect general population characteristics.
A discrete choice experiment examined participants' preferences for primary care consultation for three cancer symptom scenarios: risk level not mentioned, risk designated as 'low', or risk designated as 'high'. Scenarios based on length of consultation, time to getting an appointment, convenience, choice of GP, and GP listening skills were presented in a self-completed online questionnaire.
A total of 9616 observations were obtained from 601 participants. Participants expressed preferences for doctors with better listening skills, the ability to see a GP of their choice, and shorter waiting times. These findings were the same across risk conditions and demographic groups. Participants were willing to wait an extra 3.5 weeks for an appointment with a doctor with good/very good listening skills (versus very poor listening skills) and an extra week for an appointment with a GP of their choice (versus any GP).
Patient decisions about help seeking seem to be particularly influenced by the anticipated listening skills of doctors. Improving doctors' communication skills may in the longer term encourage people to seek prompt medical help when they experience a cancer symptom.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 7. 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 29 May 2018.
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#7,176,704
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Outputs from British Journal of General Practice
#2,362
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#88,996
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Outputs of similar age from British Journal of General Practice
#44
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Altmetric has tracked 34,411,289 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 79th percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 5,799 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 20.3. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 59% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 100 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 55% of its contemporaries.
