Medical information sources for cancer patients: Health care providers perspective

Abstract

Majority of Americans are paying moderate or a great deal of attention to medical health news. The ability to clearly determine patients’ past and potential medical information sources can help both physicians and patients make more efficient medical decisions, but limited study has been done to identify health care providers’ attitude about their patients’ use of this data. A survey was implemented at the Vanderbilt Ingram Cancer Center, Nashville, TN. Of the 110 individuals approached, 66 (60%) completed the questionnaires. Almost 90% health care providers expected patients to gather information from human sources, even though the quality of information obtained from some of those sources, particularly friends, relatives and acquaintances was poor (2.68 of 7). Patients were recommended to limit using friends, relatives and acquaintances as sources of information. The quality of information obtained from various sources was consistently rated lower by health care providers than patients. Health care providers felt that certain patient demographics are good predictors for cancer information source preferences.