What prostate cancer patients should know: variation in professionals' opinions

Purpose: This study was designed to determine what questions health-care pr ofessionals think should be addressed with curable prostate cancer patients before treatment decisions are made. Method: A survey was distributed to radiation oncologists, urologists, medi cal oncologists, nurses and radiation therapy technologists (RTTs) involved in treating prostate cancer patients. Participants were asked to judge the importance of addressing each of 78 questions (essential/important/no opin ion/avoid) with a described hypothetical patient prior to the treatment dec ision. Eighty participants were later selected at random for a retest. Results: The overall response rate was 55% (284/518) on the initial survey and 56% (45/80) on the retest. The relative importance of the various quest ions was similar across groups (r-(76) ranged from 0.75 to 0.91, all P < 0. 001). Despite the between-group similarity, opinions within each group vari ed widely. For example, among oncologists, the number of questions deemed e ssential by individual respondents ranged from five to 69, with >90% respon dent agreement on only 15 of the 78 questions. The extent of agreement was similar in the other groups. The retest showed that essential and important responses were reasonably stable, i.e. 92% of questions judged essential a t one time were judged either essential (58%) or important (34%) at the oth er time. Conclusions: Although the relative importance of addressing the various que stions appears similar across the professional groups involved in the care of prostate patients, within each profession there seems to be little agree ment. The lack of agreement includes both how many questions are essential to address and whether or not most individual questions are essential. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.