Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Jun 1, 2023
Open Peer Review Period: May 24, 2023 - Jul 19, 2023
Date Accepted: Mar 6, 2024
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Patients’ and clinicians’ perceptions of the clinical utility of predictive risk models for chemotherapy-related symptom management: Qualitative exploration using focus groups and interviews.
ABSTRACT
Background:
Interest in the application of predictive risk models (PRMs) in healthcare to identify people most likely to experience disease and treatment-related complications is increasing. In cancer care, these techniques are focused primarily on prediction of survival or life-threatening toxicities (e.g. febrile neutropenia). Fewer studies focused on use of PRMs for symptoms or supportive care needs. The application of PRMs to chemotherapy-related symptoms (CRS) would enable earlier identification and initiation of prompt, personalised and tailored interventions. While some PRMs exist for CRS, few were translated into clinical practice and human factors associated with their use were not reported.
Objective:
Explore patients’ and clinicians’ perspectives of the utility and real-world application of PRMs to improve the management of CRS.
Methods:
Focus groups (n=10) and interviews (n=5) were conducted with patients (n=28) and clinicians (n=26) across five European countries. Interactions were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim and analysed thematically.
Results:
Both clinicians and patients recognized the value of having individualised risk predictions for CRS and appreciated how this type of information would facilitate the provision of tailored preventative treatments and/or supportive care interactions. However cautious and skeptical attitudes towards the use of PRMs in clinical care were noted by both groups particularly in relationship to the uncertainty regarding how the information would be generated. Visualisation and presentation of PRM information in a usable and useful format for both patients and clinicians was identified as a challenge to their successful implementation in clinical care.
Conclusions:
Findings from this study provide information on clinicians’ and patients’ perspectives on the clinical use of PRMs for the management of CRS. These international perspectives are important because they provide insight into the risks and benefits of using PRMs to evaluate CRS. In addition, they highlight the need to find ways to more effectively present and use this information in clinical practice. Further research that explores the best ways to incorporate this type of information while maintaining the human side of care is warranted. Clinical Trial: This paper reports on a secondary objective from a larger programme of work Trial Registration: Clinical Trials.gov NCT02356081
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.