- Title
- Exploring health literacy and preferences for risk communication among medical oncology patients
- Creator
- Carey, Mariko; Herrmann, Anne; Hall, Alix; Mansfield, Elise; Fakes, Kristy
- Relation
- Funding BodyNHMRC.Grant Number1010536
- Relation
- PLoS ONE Vol. 13, Issue 9, no. e0203988
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0203988
- Publisher
- Public Library of Science
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2018
- Description
- Objective: To explore adult medical oncology outpatients' understanding of and preferences for the format of health risk information. Methods Two surveys, one assessing sociodemographic characteristics and a second survey examining perceptions of risk information. Results Of the 361 (74%) consenting patients, 210 completed at least one question on risk communication. 17% to 65% of patients understood numeric risk information, depending on the format of the information. More than 50% of people interpreted a "very good" chance of remission as greater than 80%, greater than 90% or 100%. The most preferred format of information was in both words and numbers (38% to 43%) followed by words alone (28% to 30%). Conclusion Numeric risk information is understood by 17% to 65% of respondents, depending on the format. Interpretation of verbal risk information is highly variable, posing a risk of misunderstanding. Provision of information in both words and numbers may assist in aiding comprehension.
- Subject
- health risks; surveys; cancer care; oncology; patients
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1402554
- Identifier
- uon:35045
- Identifier
- ISSN:1932-6203
- Rights
- © 2018 Carey et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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