Abstract P1-15-09: What are the outcomes of importance for patient education in breast cancer?

Abstract Background: Patient education is an important component of quality cancer care. However, there remains much debate about its effects, merits and limitations. There is a lack of consensus on the intended effects of educational interventions and a lack of standardized outcome measures to assess quality. As a result, multiple outcomes measures are used without consistency and in differing combinations in the literature making it difficult to compare relative efficacy of interventions. The primary objective of this study was to identify outcomes of importance for patient education interventions in breast cancer. Methods: A generic qualitative study using interpretive description was conducted to discover what key stakeholders in the process of patient education in breast cancer (patients, physicians and nurses) would identify as outcomes of importance. The study population included breast cancer patients, physicians and nurses caring for breast cancer patients at the Juravinski Hospital and Cancer Centre in Hamilton, Ontario. Four focus groups and one semi-structured interview was conducted using purposeful sampling and an iterative design. Results: Eight patients, five nurses and four physicians participated in this study. Five common themes to all groups with respect to outcomes of importance in patient education were discovered: improving knowledge, improving coping ability, providing an orientation to the cancer system, enabling shared decision making and impacting behaviour during cancer treatment. Conclusion: Despite the surprising variability and inconsistency of outcomes discovered in the patient education literature, this qualitative study demonstrated that patients, physicians and nurses generally agree on what constitute important outcomes and serves as a first step in the process of developing validated outcomes for patient education interventions in cancer. Citation Format: Ghazaleh Kazemi, Mark Levine, Harold Reiter, Christina Sinding. What are the outcomes of importance for patient education in breast cancer? [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 2019 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium; 2019 Dec 10-14; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2020;80(4 Suppl):Abstract nr P1-15-09.