Differences in attitudes and beliefs toward end-of-life care between hematologic and solid tumor oncology specialists

Impact of Oncologists’ Attitudes Toward End-of-Life Care on Patients’ Access to Palliative Care

“…The sample size calculation for the primary objective of the present study has been previously reported [11,12]. In a post hoc sample size calculation with 182 respondents and 33% answering "Agree" or "Strongly Agree" to the question of referring patients to palliative care with newly diagnosed cancer, a Wilcoxon rank sum test would have 80% power (assuming two-sided 5% a) to detect p 5 .63 versus p 5 .50, where p is the probability that a randomly chosen EOL score Oncologists' End-of-Life Care Approaches CME value from one group would be greater than a randomly chosen value from the other group.…”

“…The present study was a planned analysis of a survey that examined the EOL care preferences among hematologic and solid tumor oncology specialists [11]. The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center institutional review board approved the present study and waived the requirement for informed consent.…”

“…The study method has been described in detail previously [11,12]. In brief, we randomly sampled 60 individuals each from four groups (hematologic oncologists, solid tumor medical oncologists, hematologic oncology advanced practice providers, and solid tumor advanced practice providers) in the Division of Cancer Medicine at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center to participate in a mail/electronic survey between May and August 2014.…”

“…The provision of supportive care was evaluated by asking respondents whether they were comfortable providing symptom management for their patients and whether they were comfortable providing counseling to their patients [11]. EOL cancer treatment decisions were assessed by asking whether the respondents were comfortable prescribing systemic therapies to their advanced cancer patients with an Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) performance status of 3 and 4.…”

“…All cases described the same 60-year-old man with advanced incurable cancer who had an expressed interest in a treatment with a 15% response rate, moderate toxicity, and no expected survival gain. The only characteristics that differed among the three cases were regarding the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance status (4, 3, and 2) and expected survival (1, 3, and 6 months), respectively [11]. For these three cases, the clinicians rated their response from 1 (strongly against treatment) to 7 (strongly recommend treatment).…”