Table 4.

Select Quotes from Physicians

Theme	Physician	Quote
Cost	5	“We are trying to figure out where you can get the money to treat them and whether you can treat them or not. That’s very unfair, to base decisions on financial reasons.”
Cost	4	“And quite often if it’s cost, they they’ll tell me the cost is it. I say okay see if there are ways and means to get around it, let’s just discuss with the social worker. Let’s see what funding they can provide, what support we can harness for you.”
Need to treat	2	“Usually if they do not want treatment I can always say, “Let’s start one with a little bit only, you don’t want then we stop.”
Patient factors	3	“We keep it patient-centric, for example, some patient might have something more about their disease uh or, or a non-disease-related factor, for example patient with heart problems or patient with liver problems, when they come in we say, this is what we use normally but unfortunately given your disease, this I think is going to be a bit tricky so I would suggest this.”
Patient autonomy	5	“Sometimes views conflict and my worry is sometimes I don’t actually know what the patients want, because they are deferring to their caregivers”
Patient autonomy	2	“There’s a cultural difference in how patients and carers make decisions about the treatment and I don’t think in our society we are capturing that at the moment and we are allowing enough information in the correct way to go out to the patients so that they can actually be involved in the shared decision-making.”
Patient autonomy	1	“I think the patients should be given a chance to express their opinions independently and that doesn’t always happen.”