The clinician's role in meeting patient information needs: suggested learning outcomes.

BACKGROUND: Patients have always fulfilled their information needs from a variety of different sources over time. Clinician-patient consultations are one part of that process. Some patients have increasing opportunities to obtain information through new sources such as the internet, touch-screens, and patient-held records. Others remain poorly informed. OBJECTIVES: To identify learning outcomes for clinicians in meeting patient information needs and working with well-informed patients. DESIGN: Four-stage multicentre multidisciplinary qualitative study. SETTING AND SUBJECTS: (1) Semistructured interviews with 20 clinicians in Glasgow; (2) semistructured interviews with 52 clinicians in Nottingham and London; (3) testing of consensus by postal questionnaire and Delphi method amongst 37 clinicians in medicine, nursing and the professions allied to medicine, and (4) conference to discuss results. RESULTS: 46 learning outcomes were identified in the eight areas of: placing a higher priority on patient information and education; understanding the patient's information needs and environment; understanding the emotional aspects of learning; developing patient understanding; helping patients to understand about health care and health care information; learning from the patient; knowing about information sources and their use, and issues of multidisciplinary working. CONCLUSIONS: The suggested learning outcomes provide the basis for wider discussion, for possible inclusion in curricula both at undergraduate and continuing education levels, and as the basis for the development of new educational materials.

Preferences for different sources of information about cancer.

A wide range of cancer information resources is available to patients and their relatives, who are increasingly acting as independent learners. In order to examine preferences for different types of information and to establish the appropriateness of providing a Web-based cancer information resource (CancerHelp UK) a questionnaire survey was undertaken. Of 258 questionnaires distributed to patients attending for oncology outpatient or general practice appointments, 205 (80%) were suitable for analysis. 74% (95% confidence interval 68% to 80%) of participants wanted as much information as possible. All participants cited people most frequently as a future source of cancer information. All participants frequently cited television as a source of both general and cancer-specific information. Despite a lack of computer experience patients were significantly more likely than other groups to say that they would like to use the Web-based resource. It is suggested that such resources are likely to be increasingly well used, particularly by cancer patients, given the growth in health information on the Web and developments in delivery of digital information into the home via television.