Patients' Cancer Treatment Expectations and the Impact on Experiences
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Patients' Expectations of Cancer Treatment and their Impact upon Experiences
IRAS ID
188355
Contact name
S.G. Cockle
Contact email
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 5 months, 1 days
Research summary
What are Patients' Expectations of Cancer Treatment? Do they Impact Upon Treatment Experiences?
Cancer treatment is a difficult time for patients and exploring what can make this time as good as it can be is important. One factor that may have an impact on experiences is patients' pre-treatment expectations; expectations about treatment effectiveness and side effects, and more generally about the impact upon daily life.
The research has four phases, aiming to explore expectations and experiences of cancer treatment.
The first involves conducting in-depth interviews with cancer patients in order to understand what their expectations were prior to commencing treatment, how these changed over time and whether they believe their expectations had any impact upon their experiences of treatment.
The second phase involves the creation and testing of a new questionnaire to measure expectations of cancer treatment. This will be developed by combining results from phase one with existing questionnaires and other information from previous research, to create a more comprehensive questionnaire than is currently available. This will be tested with cancer patients to check appropriate language has been used and questions are relevant.
The third phase involves using the new questionnaire from phase two to measure patients' pre-treatment expectations about an upcoming cancer treatment (for example, surgery). Then around the time of that treatment they will be asked to complete questionnaires relating to their experiences of treatment with a focus on quality of life. Patients then due to receive a second treatment type (for example, radiotherapy) will then be asked to repeat this process for that second treatment. Results will be analysed to understand the relationship between expectations and experiences.
The final phase does not involve patients but asks individuals about their expectations of a hypothetical treatment and explores the impact of framing of information on those expectations and subsequent feelings about the treatment decision.REC name
South West - Frenchay Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/SW/0273
Date of REC Opinion
10 Nov 2015
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion