Impact of Individualized Patient Education Material on Patients’ Cancer Care Experiences

Purpose: Patient education materials (PEMs) empower patients to have an understanding of their health and treatment options. PEMs that currently exist in Radiation Oncology are available primarily as text heavy resources, or multiple-click web-based Internet resources, exceeding the national readability recommendation of a 6th grade reading level.

A health literacy level appropriate PEM that simplifies the complexity of a cancer diagnosis and treatment options may be a reasonable option to facilitate patient-provider communication in Oncology. We are developing a multidisciplinary, health literacy appropriate thoracic oncology PEM at Rush University Medical Center (RUMC) in Chicago, IL, which serves a diverse patient population with varying health literacy levels. This new PEM, part of an ongoing study, aims to address the knowledge translation gap. The primary outcome is to assess the mean difference in patient satisfaction between control and study groups. The secondary outcome is to assess an interaction effect between health literacy and the overall effect of the PEM on patient satisfaction.

Methodology: The study design is a prospective randomized control trial. The research protocol was approved by the Institutional Review Board at RUMC, and data collection will occur between January and June 2022. All English or Spanish speaking adults (20 years and above) scheduled for a new patient consult during Comprehensive Lung Clinic will be included. Patients will be randomized to the control or intervention group. The control group will receive the standard of care (physician encounter without the PEM), while the intervention group will receive standard of care and the PEM. All patients will complete an anonymized validated survey that measures health literacy levels, sociodemographic factors, and satisfaction of the encounter. A cumulative anonymized health-care provider survey will gather descriptive data about health-care providers’ experiences using the PEM.

The PEM is currently being developed in collaboration with media designers and the RUMC Patient Education Committee. Readability of the PEM will be assessed with ten common readability assessment scales, represented through a mean score.

Descriptive statistics will characterize the control and study group. Patient satisfaction will be measured on a 5-point scale. A two-sample t-test with a one-sided alternative will measure the difference of mean score of patient satisfaction between the control and study group. We will apply interaction tests to determine the differential impact of health literacy on the correlation of the PEM and patient satisfaction. Multiple linear regression modeling will be done to determine the correlation of the PEM and patient satisfaction after adjusting for other socio-demographic variables.

Results: Preliminary results will be presented in March 2022.

Conclusions: If successful, we will explore expanding this study to other treatment sites, with the overall goal of improving health literacy appropriate PEMs in Radiation Oncology.

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