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Patient experiences of waiting times in standardised cancer patient pathways in Norway – a qualitative interview study

OBJECTIVE: Standardised cancer patient pathways (CPP) are implemented within cancer care with an aim to ensure standardised waiting times for diagnosis and treatment. This article investigates how patients in Norway experience waiting times within a CPP. METHODS: Qualitative semi-structured intervie...

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Autores principales: Solbjør, Marit, Sand, Kari, Ervik, Bente, Melby, Line
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8256611/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34225705
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12913-021-06679-8
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author Solbjør, Marit
Sand, Kari
Ervik, Bente
Melby, Line
author_facet Solbjør, Marit
Sand, Kari
Ervik, Bente
Melby, Line
author_sort Solbjør, Marit
collection PubMed
description OBJECTIVE: Standardised cancer patient pathways (CPP) are implemented within cancer care with an aim to ensure standardised waiting times for diagnosis and treatment. This article investigates how patients in Norway experience waiting times within a CPP. METHODS: Qualitative semi-structured interviews with 19 patients who had been through CPP for breast cancer, prostate cancer or malignant melanoma in Norway. RESULTS: Few patients knew about the term CPP but trusted that waiting times were standardised to decrease mortality. Their experiences of waiting depended on their expectations as much as the period they waited. Patients generally felt safe about the timing of treatment, but not all expectations of a rapid response from health services were met. Short waiting times were interpreted as a sign of urgency, and a change of pace between urgent action and prolonged periods of waiting were disturbing. CONCLUSIONS: Patients are comforted by knowing they are within a structured CPP that ensures rapid diagnosis and start of treatment. CPPs still need to be improved to avoid delays, allow for adaptions to patient needs, and include more information to avoid stress.
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spelling pubmed-82566112021-07-06 Patient experiences of waiting times in standardised cancer patient pathways in Norway – a qualitative interview study Solbjør, Marit Sand, Kari Ervik, Bente Melby, Line BMC Health Serv Res Research OBJECTIVE: Standardised cancer patient pathways (CPP) are implemented within cancer care with an aim to ensure standardised waiting times for diagnosis and treatment. This article investigates how patients in Norway experience waiting times within a CPP. METHODS: Qualitative semi-structured interviews with 19 patients who had been through CPP for breast cancer, prostate cancer or malignant melanoma in Norway. RESULTS: Few patients knew about the term CPP but trusted that waiting times were standardised to decrease mortality. Their experiences of waiting depended on their expectations as much as the period they waited. Patients generally felt safe about the timing of treatment, but not all expectations of a rapid response from health services were met. Short waiting times were interpreted as a sign of urgency, and a change of pace between urgent action and prolonged periods of waiting were disturbing. CONCLUSIONS: Patients are comforted by knowing they are within a structured CPP that ensures rapid diagnosis and start of treatment. CPPs still need to be improved to avoid delays, allow for adaptions to patient needs, and include more information to avoid stress. BioMed Central 2021-07-05 /pmc/articles/PMC8256611/ /pubmed/34225705 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12913-021-06679-8 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Solbjør, Marit
Sand, Kari
Ervik, Bente
Melby, Line
Patient experiences of waiting times in standardised cancer patient pathways in Norway – a qualitative interview study
title Patient experiences of waiting times in standardised cancer patient pathways in Norway – a qualitative interview study
title_full Patient experiences of waiting times in standardised cancer patient pathways in Norway – a qualitative interview study
title_fullStr Patient experiences of waiting times in standardised cancer patient pathways in Norway – a qualitative interview study
title_full_unstemmed Patient experiences of waiting times in standardised cancer patient pathways in Norway – a qualitative interview study
title_short Patient experiences of waiting times in standardised cancer patient pathways in Norway – a qualitative interview study
title_sort patient experiences of waiting times in standardised cancer patient pathways in norway – a qualitative interview study
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8256611/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34225705
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12913-021-06679-8
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