“Even if I Don’t Remember, I Feel Better”. A Qualitative Study of Patients with Early-Stage Non–Small Cell Lung Cancer Undergoing Stereotactic Body Radiotherapy or Surgery
Published in
Annals of the American Thoracic Society, August 2016
While surgical resection is recommended for most patients with early stage lung cancer according to the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) guidelines, stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) is being increasingly utilized. Provider-patient communication regarding risks/benefits of each approach may be a modifiable factor leading to improved patient-centered outcomes.
To qualitatively describe the experiences of patients undergoing either surgery or stereotactic body radiotherapy for early stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).
We qualitatively evaluated and used content analysis to describe the experiences of 13 patients in three health care systems in the Pacific Northwest with early clinical stage NSCLC before undergoing treatment, with a focus on knowledge obtained, communication, and feelings of distress.
Although most participants reported rarely having been told about other options for treatment, and could not readily recall many details about specific risks of recommended treatment, they were satisfied with their care. Participants paradoxically described their clinicians as displaying caring and empathy despite not explicitly addressing patient concerns and worries. We found that the communication domains that underlie shared decision making occurred infrequently, but participants were still pleased with their role in the decision making process. We did not find substantially different themes based on where the participant received care or treatment selected.
Patients were satisfied with all aspects of their care despite reporting little knowledge about risks or other treatment options, no direct elicitation of worries from providers, and a lack of shared decision making. While the development of effective communication strategies to address these gaps is warranted, their effect on patient-centered outcomes, such as distress and decisional conflict, is unclear.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 5. 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 31 March 2023.
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#7,597,114
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#1,542
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