Kurzfassung

Patient education to support shared decision-making is crucial for patients with malignant diseases to increase adherence to treatments, thereby decrease side effects and improve well-being and quality of life[i],[ii]. Besides its importance, there is almost no standardized procedure for patient education, which in turn relies merely on the experience, knowledge and skills of the physician, as well as on the individual capabilities of the patient.
In spite of the lack of structure und...Patient education to support shared decision-making is crucial for patients with malignant diseases to increase adherence to treatments, thereby decrease side effects and improve well-being and quality of life[i],[ii]. Besides its importance, there is almost no standardized procedure for patient education, which in turn relies merely on the experience, knowledge and skills of the physician, as well as on the individual capabilities of the patient.
In spite of the lack of structure und interpersonal differences and capacities, studies have shown an overall acceptable level of satisfaction with current information strategies. However, most of these analyses have measured subjective rather than objective understanding and relevant gain in knowledge[iii]. With increasing complexity of oncological treatments, however, in-depth understanding is becoming more and more relevant for patient guidance[iv], but remains difficult to achieve.
To better ascertain the current level of “informedness”, in a first step we will analyze the subjective satisfaction in addition to the objective knowledge in newly diagnosed cancer patients. For this, we will use the validated EORTC QLQ-INFO25 (subjective informedness), in combination with a specifically developed questionnaire to assess the objective level of understanding.  To minimize inter-physician variability, treating physicians will use a checklist during their consultation, to provide a standardized education concept. As a model disease, we chose patients with malignant lymphomas.
We hypothesize that subjective and objective understanding differ significantly. Our objective is to identify current information deficits and to improve patients’ informedness. Therefore, we will develop a multi-modal audiovisual education concept based on our findings. Subsequently, we will investigate whether the multi-modal material improves both objective and subjective informedness to be confirmed in a prospective randomized trial with lymphoma patients in co-operation with the German Lymphoma Alliance.

 
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