Table 3.

Major study themes and subthemes

Objective	Theme	Subtheme	Example quote
Patient–provider discussion about lung cancer screening	Being Qualified to Screen		‘She [provider] handed me a paper and she said ‘read over this’… she didn’t really [describe it]. I got most of my information off the paper. I mean, she said I didn’t have to do it, but if I’d like to, they could set it up and I could go on and have it done’.
	Discussion Followed by Provider Recommendation		‘He recommended it because I had smoked a certain amount of time, a certain amount of cigarettes per day and…was eligible’.
Reasons for opting out of lung cancer screening	Knowledge Avoidance	Fear of the Disease	‘so I didn’t choose to go do the test. If I did try to go do the test, I would be kind of scared, because I’ve been smoking since I was 12 and I really don’t—I mean, I can imagine what my lungs look like and what they might find’.
		Fear of the Treatment	‘I think it’s fear of the unknown—if I know, well then there’s a scary response. You know you have to follow through and do more and more’.
	Perceived Low Value	Wasted Effort	‘It could show me if I had lung cancer and—what are they going to do?…screening for it doesn’t really make any difference because I’ll either come down with lung cancer or I won’t’.
		Scepticism	‘What is it going to do? What is it going to prove? That I don’t have it right now. But in five years I could end up developing lung cancer from my past exposure’.
	False-Positive Worry		‘I did schedule one and then after I read the print out and the office called me, I cancelled it…the false positives were so high’.
	Practical Barriers		‘…I was still working at that time and I really didn’t have time to get over there during the week and so I haven’t had it done’.
	Patient Misunderstanding		‘once we got to the point where I realized it wasn’t going to be covered by my insurance, that was basically the end of it…if it had been less expensive, I would have done it’.