Despite the known benefits of screening, early detection and advances in treatment modalities, negative attitudes to cancer persist among health care professionals, and cancer remains the most feared disease in modern society. Attitudes to cancer may create a barrier to communication between patients and health care professionals, hinder early detection, treatment and rehabilitation, and may influence decision making about referral to specialist services and the selection of appropriate treatments.
A descriptive survey was conducted, within a Regional Cancer Centre, to evaluate oncology health care professionals' attitudes towards cancer. Attitudes were measured using the Burns' Cancer Belief Scales.
Regardless of gender, profession and clinical experience, all health care professionals displayed persistently negative attitudes towards cancer. No statistically significant difference was detected between gender, profession, clinical experience or specialist education, and although small in number, no major differences were found between group means.
Oncology health care professionals hold negative attitudes towards cancer and changing these attitudes presents a significant challenge. Educational programmes and supportive strategies may alleviate fears and promote a more positive image of cancer. However, such strategies must be based on an understanding of current attitudes towards this phenomenon.
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 14 April 2016.
All research outputs
#5,405,738
of 27,780,120 outputs
Outputs from Annals of Oncology
#3,024
of 8,885 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#16,770
of 148,395 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Annals of Oncology
#9
of 34 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 27,780,120 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 8,885 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 14.9. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 60% 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 148,395 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 87% 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 gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 73% of its contemporaries.
