The DOI matches its Crossref record.
Information needs of cancer patients in west Scotland: cross sectional survey of patients' views
Open accessAbstract
Objective : To assess the needs of patients with cancer for information about their condition. Design : Cross sectional survey of patients' views by means of semistructured interview with questionnaire. Setting : A regional cancer centre and two university hospitals in west Scotland. Subjects : 250 (93%) of 269 cancer patients invited to participate in study who were selected by age, sex, socioeconomic status, and tumour site to be representative of cancer patients in west Scotland. Main outcome measures : Patients' need to know whether they had cancer, the medical name of their illness, progress through treatment, how treatment works, side effects, chances of cure, and treatment options. Results : 79% (95% confidence interval 73% to 84%) of patients wanted as much information as possible, and 96% (93% to 98%) had a need or an absolute need to know if they had cancer. Most patients also wanted to know the chance of cure (91% (87% to 94%)) and about side effects of treatment (94% (90% to 97%)). When the replies were cross tabulated with patients' age, sex, deprivation score, and type of treatment there was a linear trend for patients from more affluent areas to want more information and those from deprived areas to want less. There was a strong preference for diagnosis of cancer to be given by a hospital doctor (60% (53% to 66%). Conclusion : Almost all patients wanted to know their diagnosis, and most wanted to know about prognosis, treatment options, and side effects. Key messages: We interviewed 250 patients with cancer to find out what information they wanted Almost all the patients wanted to know their diagnosis, and most also wanted to know the chance of cure and the side effects of their treatment Younger patients, women, and those receiving radical treatment in particular wanted to know more about treatment options The overwhelming preference was for the diagnosis of cancer to be given by a hospital doctor
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cited by
Information needs of patients with cancer: results from a large study in UK cancer centres
Jenkins, V, Fallowfield, L., & Saul, J. (2001) · British Journal of Cancer · doi:10.1054/bjoc.2000.1573 · Cited by 845
Self-citationCancer patients' information needs and information seeking behaviour: in depth interview study
Leydon, G. M. (2000) · BMJ · doi:10.1136/bmj.320.7239.909 · Cited by 836
Collusion in doctor-patient communication about imminent death: an ethnographic study
The, A.-M., Hak, T., Koeter, G., & van der Wal, G. (2000) · BMJ · doi:10.1136/bmj.321.7273.1376 · Cited by 533
Communicating prognosis in cancer care: a systematic review of the literature
Hagerty, R. G., Butow, P. N., Ellis, P. M., Dimitry, S., & Tattersall, M. H. N. (2005) · Annals of Oncology · doi:10.1093/annonc/mdi211 · Cited by 504
and the AYA HOPE Study Collaborative Group, Keegan, T. H. M., Lichtensztajn, D. Y., Kato, I., Kent, E. E., Wu, X.-C., West, M. M., Hamilton, A. S., Zebrack, B., Bellizzi, K. M., et al. (2012) · Journal of Cancer Survivorship · doi:10.1007/s11764-012-0219-9 · Cited by 347
Metadata
- Authors
- Meredith, C., Symonds, P., Webster, L., Lamont, D., Pyper, E., Gillis, C. R., & Fallowfield, L.
- Venue
- BMJ
- Publisher
- BMJ
- Published
- 1996-09-21
- Volume
- 313
- Issue
- 7059
- Pages
- 724-726
- ISSN
- 0007-1447 (ISSN-L)
- 0959-8138
- 1468-5833
- OpenAlex
- W2024223158
- Cited by
- 583
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 66.70
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Information needs of cancer patients in west Scotland: cross sectional survey of patients' views. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1136/bmj.313.7059.724
- The paper
- Meredith, C., Symonds, P., Webster, L., Lamont, D., Pyper, E., Gillis, C. R., & Fallowfield, L. (1996). Information needs of cancer patients in west Scotland: cross sectional survey of patients' views. BMJ. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.313.7059.724
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
