Symptom appraisal and help seeking in potential endometrial cancer
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Exploring the factors that influence symptom appraisal and help seeking behaviour in women with gynaecological symptoms
IRAS ID
245458
Contact name
Emma Crosbie
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
The University of Manchester
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 5 months, 0 days
Research summary
Womb cancer is the most common gynaecological cancer in the UK. If diagnosed early, women have an excellent prognosis, but 1 of women present with advanced disease with 5-year survival rates of just 15%.
The majority of women with womb cancer will experience symptoms such as abnormal vaginal bleeding when the tumour is small, or even in its pre-cancerous phase. However, most women delay visiting their GP for at least a month; others do not consult their GP at all and are diagnosed as an emergency.
Potential barriers to seeking help include embarrassment, a lack of awareness of symptoms, a lack of willingness to be examined/to examine, reluctance to be referred for investigations and the intrusive nature of diagnostics. However, these have never been studied before. Delayed help seeking behaviour adversely affects clinical outcomes in most cancer types but it is unclear whether this delay has an impact on the stage of disease at diagnosis or extent of treatment related morbidity for women with womb cancer.
We want to gain a better understanding of whether women who delay seeking help from their GP have more advanced disease when diagnosed and why these women delay seeking help from their GP. We will ask women with womb cancer about the symptoms they experienced and when they saw their GP through a written questionnaire. We will then invite a subgroup of women to participate in an in depth interview to explore factors that affect women’s recognition of red flag symptoms in womb cancer (symptom appraisal) and decision to access medical care (help seeking behaviour).Understanding the barriers to help seeking behaviour is fundamental to improving outcomes from womb cancer and informing meaningful improvement initiatives.
This research is funded by NIHR and will be recruiting participants from St Mary's Hospital and Trafford General Hospital.
REC name
North West - Greater Manchester South Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
20/NW/0142
Date of REC Opinion
17 Mar 2020
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion