Communicating benefits and risks of cancer screening
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Communicating benefits and risks of cancer screening: What factors influence physicians' risk communication?
IRAS ID
189158
Contact name
Olga Kostopoulou
Contact email
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 4 months, 0 days
Research summary
This study will investigate what factors influence physician-patient communication about cancer screening. Besides benefits, some cancer screenings can also cause a number of harms in the form of false-positive tests or unnecessary treatments. When this is the case, experts have recommended informed and shared decision making of patients and physicians. However, it is not yet clear how physicians communicate about benefits and harms from cancer screenings with their patients and what factors influence their recommendations and willingness to involve the patient in decision making. Knowledge of the factors that influence physician risk communication about cancer screenings will be useful in making recommendations for improving risk communication and shared decision making. The results of this study will be valuable to both patients and medical professionals.
This study will investigate the influence of four specific factors on physician risk communication, recommendations, and shared decision making preferences about cancer screening: the presence of a recommendation for screening by the NHS, screening effectiveness, patient numeracy, and physician numeracy. Participants will be practising general practitioners (GPs). We will construct an anonymous online questionnaire and invite practising GPs to participate via e-mail. GPs will read a brief description of a fictitious patient, who comes for advice regarding a screening test for cancer X (no specific cancer will be named). Participants will then read information about: a) the current NHS recommendation regarding the screening; b) screening outcomes, i.e., probabilities of benefits and harms, and c) patient numeracy. Participants will be asked how they would communicate screening risks and benefits to the specific patient, what their recommendation would be, and to what extent they would involve the patient in decision making. Finally, they will be asked a series of questions measuring their numeracy and understanding of probability. The survey will last about 15 minutes.REC name
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REC reference
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