Knowledge and decision making in prostate cancer care

Prostate cancer remains a very common cancer in men, yet relatively few men understand the implications associated with the diagnosis and subsequent treatment of prostate cancer. Men newly diagnosed with prostate cancer often lacked a basic understanding of the disease, with many survivors confirming their greatest unmet need was reliable knowledge of the disease.

In order to analyse men’s knowledge of the disease Dragan Illic and colleagues from the DEPM conducted focus groups designed to explore the views of both prostate cancer sufferers and men at risk. Of particular interest were the ways in which the men approached the different treatments available, and the ways they gathered information to assist the decision making process.

 

Their paper highlighted that men adopt a multi-factorial approach to decision making regarding prostate cancer, including collecting information from the internet, other survivors and health professionals.

 

From this the researchers concluded that a health knowledge broker could independently assist patients to learn more about the disease, their treatment options and to assist them in the decision making process.