are health care professionals able to judge cancer patients health care preferences correctly a cross-sectional study卫生保健专业人员能够判断癌症病人的卫生保健首选项正确横断面研究.pdfVIP

Wessels et al. BMC Health Services Research 2010, 10:198 /1472-6963/10/198 R E S E A R C H A R T I C L E Open Access Research article Are health care professionals able to judge cancer patients health care preferences correctly? A cross-sectional study 1,2 2 3 1 4 2 Hester Wessels , Alexander de Graeff , Klaske Wynia , Miriam de Heus , Cas LJJ Kruitwagen , Saskia CCM Teunissen and Emile E Voest*2 Abstract Background: Health care for cancer patients is primarily shaped by health care professionals. This raises the question to what extent health care professionals are aware of patients preferences, needs and values. The aim of this study was to explore to what extent there is concordance between patients preferences in cancer care and patients preferences as estimated by health care professionals. We also examined whether there were gender differences between health care professionals with regard to the degree in which they can estimate patients preferences correctly. Methods: To obtain unbiased insight into the specific preferences of cancer patients, we developed the Cancer patients health care preferences questionnaire. With this questionnaire we assessed a large sample of cancer patients (n = 386). Next, we asked health care professionals (medical oncologists, nurses and policymakers, n = 60) to fill out this questionnaire and to indicate preferences they thought cancer patients would have. Mean scores between groups were compared using Mann-Whitney tests. Effect sizes (ESs) were calculated for statistically significant differences. Results: We found significant differences (ESs 0.31 to 0.90) between patients and professionals for eight out of twenty- one scales and two out of eigh