The purpose of this study was to investigate the efficacy of decision support intervention on treatment knowledge, decision self-efficacy, decisional conflict, and decision satisfaction in patients with hepatocellular cancer. The study was a randomized controlled trial. In all, 69 patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) were recruited and randomly assigned to a decision support group or a control group. Data were collected at baseline, post-test, and follow-up using self-report questionnaires. After controlling for baseline scores, the between-group difference (95% confidence interval [CI]) for treatment-related knowledge in post-test scores was 11.9 (6.1, 17.8). After controlling for baseline scores, the between-group difference (95% CI) for decisional conflict was −7.0 (−12.0, −2.0). There was no statistically significant between-group difference in decision self-efficacy and decision satisfaction. Findings supported the efficacy of decision support intervention to improve treatment knowledge and reduce decisional conflict but had no significant effect on decision self-efficacy and decision satisfaction in patients with HCC.

Background: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a high incidence and high mortality disease. The choice of cancer treatment is extremely important and involves a high-risk, complex and difficult decision-making process. Although the guidelines use evidence for disease treatment, due to the individual patient factors and tumor stage differences, cancer treatment decisions by patients still lead to uncertainty. Objective: When people lack information or skills, they may make decisions that are not optimal. Clinically, we use educational programs to improve patient knowledge but there's no relevant knowledge scale that can be used as an assessment tool. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a convenient and usable knowledge scale. Methods: Based on research purposes, literature review and what physicians believe patients need to know about liver cancer, we built a liver cancer knowledge scale. Results: The total number of participants is 102, of which 66 are male and 36 are female. There is satisfactory internal consistency reliability 0.745, test-retest reliability 1.0 and construct validity were noted CVI 0.96. There was adequate overall evidence for convergent (p = 0.001) and discriminatory validity (p < 0.005). Conclusions: This knowledge scale can provide hepatocellular carcinoma before and after treatment evaluation whether patients have sufficient knowledge.