“My gut feeling is we could do more...” a qualitative study exploring staff and patient perspectives before and after the implementation of an online prostate cancer-specific holistic needs assessment

BACKGROUND: Men surviving prostate cancer report a wide range of unmet needs. Holistic needs assessments (HNA) are designed to capture these, but are traditionally paper-based, generic, and only carried out in secondary care despite national initiatives advocating a “shared care” approach. We developed an online prostate cancer-specific HNA (sHNA) built into existing IT healthcare infrastructure to provide a platform for service integration. Barriers and facilitators to implementation and use of the sHNA were explored from both the patients and healthcare professionals (HCPs) perspectives. METHODS: This qualitative study consisted of two phases. Phase 1 used semi-structured interviews to explore HCPs (n = 8) and patients (n = 10) perceptions of the sHNA, prior to implementation. Findings were used to develop an implementation strategy. Phase 2 used semi-structured interviews to explore HCPs (n = 4) and patients (n = 7) experienced barriers and motivators to using the sHNA, 9 to 12 months after implementation. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim and thematically analysed. Themes were mapped to the Theoretical Domains Framework. RESULTS: HCPs and patients anticipated many benefits from using the sHNA. Barriers to implementation included: confidence to work in depth with prostate cancer patients, organisational and cultural change, and patient factors. Our implementation strategy addressed these barriers by the provision of disease specific training delivered in part by a clinical nurse specialist; and a peer-led IT supporter. Following implementation HCPs and patients perceived the sHNA as beneficial to their practice and care, respectively. However, some patients experienced barriers in using the sHNA related predominately to symptom perception and time since treatment. HCPs suggested minor software refinements. CONCLUSIONS: This work supports the importance of identifying barriers and motivators to implementation, and using targeted action via the development of an implementation strategy to address these. Whilst this process should be on-going, undertaking this work at an early stage will help to optimise the implementation of the sHNA for future trials. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12913-019-3941-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.