Patients’ and physicians’ experiences of decision-making in MS
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Patients’ and physicians’ experiences of decision-making in Multiple Sclerosis: A multi-perspective IPA design
IRAS ID
216807
Contact name
Joanna Hanks
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Birmingham
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 5 months, 29 days
Research summary
The treatment of Multiple Sclerosis (MS) presents a complex choice for individuals affected by the illness. Differing partially-effective treatment options are available which have varying side effects and impacts upon the patients’ quality of life. It is increasingly recognised that the process of choosing appropriate treatment would be facilitated by shared decision-making between patient and physician. This study aims to investigate patients’ and physicans’ experiences of medical decision-making in the context of a clinic treating individuals with an MS diagnosis. This is a novel piece of research which has not yet been explored in the literature.\nParticipants will be 3-6 patients who have received a diagnosis of MS and who have been offered a choice of medication, and 3-6 physicians who are involved in offering a choice of treatments to MS patients. Patients will be recruited from the MS clinic situated at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham and the MS Society. Physicians will be recruited from the same clinic and the MS Society. Semi-structured interviews will be conducted. A schedule of open-ended questions and prompts will be pre-prepared to guide the conversation and participants will also be encouraged to talk about other topics related to their MS experience and treatment in the case of patients, and their experiences of making medical decisions around MS treatment in the case of physicians, with the view to exploring participants’ lived experience. The interviews will be audio recorded using a dictaphone. \nRecordings will be transcribed verbatim and analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA; Smith, 1996). The CI will read through the transcripts making annotations around areas of interest or significance. From these notes the CI will then re-read and transform the data into emerging themes. Themes will be clustered together, producing a superordinate theme. Extracts from the original interviews will be utilised to illustrate identified themes.
REC name
South Central - Oxford A Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
17/SC/0308
Date of REC Opinion
7 Jul 2017
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion