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Health information wanted and obtained from doctors/nurses: a comparison of Chinese cancer patients and family caregivers

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Abstract

Purpose

To assess and compare health information wanted and obtained from doctors/nurses by Chinese cancer patients and family caregivers. Research questions: (1) What are the instrument’s psychometrics in Chinese cancer patients and family caregivers? (2) How might Chinese cancer patients and family caregivers differ in the amount of different types of health information they want to have? and (3) How might Chinese cancer patients and family caregivers differ in the amount of different types of information they were able to obtain from doctors/nurses?

Methods

This was a cross-sectional study using a paper-pen questionnaire. A total of 198 participants (79 cancer patients; 119 family caregivers) from a general hospital in Sichuan, China completed the instrument in March 2014.

Results

The instrument has excellent reliability and validity. Participants wanted to have a wide range of health information, including but not limited to information about diagnosis or treatment. Across all types of information, participants obtained from doctors/nurses significantly less than what they wanted. The discrepancy between information wanted and obtained varied across different types of information. The discrepancy was largest for information about complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and psychosocial aspects and smallest for information about diagnosis and self-care. Patients and caregivers did not differ in the amount of different types of information they wanted or obtained from medical professionals.

Conclusions

There is a great need for providing more information to both patients and their families, particularly information about CAM and psychosocial aspects.

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Acknowledgments

This study was funded by Bo Xie’s faculty start-up research funds from the University of Texas at Austin and her Ed and Molly Smith Centennial Fellowship in Nursing. We thank our research participants, and students at the Sichuan University Medical School, Jiang Ding, Xiaoli Zhang, Wanjun Guo, and Ting Luo, for assisting in the data collection. We also thank the administrators of the Oncology Department of the Hospital, Drs. Jinping Liu, Shuchun Luo, and Ke Xie for granting us access to the facility, and the doctors and nurses there for helping make our data collection smooth and efficient.

Conflict of interest

None declared.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Nursing and School of Information, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

    Bo Xie

  2. Department of Advertising and Public Relations, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

    Zhaohui Su

  3. Department of Management, Warrington College of Business Administration, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

    Yihao Liu & Mo Wang

  4. Department of Oncology, Sichuan Provincial People’s Hospital, Chengdu, Sichuan, China

    Ming Zhang

Authors
  1. Bo Xie
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  2. Zhaohui Su
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  3. Yihao Liu
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  4. Mo Wang
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  5. Ming Zhang
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ming Zhang.

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Xie, B., Su, Z., Liu, Y. et al. Health information wanted and obtained from doctors/nurses: a comparison of Chinese cancer patients and family caregivers. Support Care Cancer 23, 2873–2880 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00520-015-2651-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00520-015-2651-7

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