| Knowledge |
Community practices lack knowledge of existing trials. |
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Practices want to increase their knowledge of clinical trials through training and education. |
I think it would be good to have training and support so that we all have at least a basic understanding of what trials are available to our patients or that some of our patients are actually in trials but we don’t necessarily know what that entails. Sometimes it’s not even reflected in their chart that they were accepted into a trial unless you go through and read the oncology notes. I think it would be helpful for continuity of care if nothing else just to know that your patient is in a trial and what kind of standards go along with that, even some of the labs that they’re going to be having drawn or the CTs or imaging or whatever. Those things would be good to know. At least the basics so that we can help answer questions if we need to. Of course we can always refer patients on to whoever it is that has that information but sometimes if you’ve developed a relationship with a patient as a physician or as a nurse and they trust you to give them information and they want to get it from you, they don’t want to call someone they don’t know and ask them so the more we know, the more we can help our patients know and understand what their options are. |
| Memory, attention, and decision processes |
Self-made reminders some urologists use are not always effective. |
I keep lists on my desk of stuff I know is out there, but I’m sure I forget about it sometimes, or I’ll come back and say, oh, shoot, they would have qualified for this, but I didn’t know…
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Practices lack systematic pathways to manage trial information. |
If there was anything in place that was a constant reminder, I’m never against it. It’s a function of taking the extra effort to dig and figure out.does this one meet the X, Y, Z criteria or whatnot.
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| Psychological skills |
Practices want more knowledge of clinical trials so that they can effectively explain and answer questions for patients. |
When they (patients) start doing those studies, if they have any problem…they’re not going to call the cancer center, they’re going to call us. So we need to be prepared to know exactly how to answer them… I guess any knowledge that I have about urological cancers in general including trials is helpful because the more I know about it, the more I’m able to educate other people. Our patients, even though they go into oncology, still typically follow with the urologist so it’s not unusual that I could get a question about anything that had to do with their cancer including a trial so I would like to have information about trials. That would be helpful to me. A lot of our patients are going to do whatever he (physician) tells them they should do, so.if he’s going to recommend it to a patient, he knows he’s recommending something that he wants to stand behind and recommend. |
