This includes length of consultations, safety netting practices, availability and wait for tests and test results, availability of advice and speed of referral to first appointment. selleck The main outcome of interest in the vignettes will be the proportion of respondents in each jurisdiction who completed the vignette at each stage compared to the one year survival and five year survival for that cancer in a given jurisdiction. Both of these survival outcomes are affected by factors in the period before referral to hospital. The conditional 5 year survival minimises the impact of factors that primarily affect survival in the first year after diagnosis, such as delays in diagnosis and aggressiveness of the tumour. Regression analyses will seek associations between other factors investigated in the survey and survival rates.
Discussion This paper describes the development of a survey to assess the differences in primary care as it relates to cancer diagnosis Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries amongst 11 jurisdictions that make up part of the ICBP. The purpose of the survey is to identify and understand differences in primary care systems and in the clinical practice of PCPs that might explain the differences in cancer outcomes between these jurisdictions. The survey was tested extensively before completion, including checks to ensure cross cultural validity. Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries Other surveys have used similar methodology, especially relating to the use Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries of vignettes and this method has good correlation with clinical practice. There are no similar surveys investigating the diagnosis of cancer across a large number of jurisdictions.
The survey is relevant to clinical practice in countries with a primary care led health service and contains clinical situations that are familiar to PCPs. The electronic nature of the survey makes it possible to use vignettes with multiple options. It is easily accessible Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries and easy to conduct and it will provide strong comparative data as a result. Its use would be restricted in countries with limited internet access for PCPs. Iterative testing of the survey was undertaken, both in England where the survey was developed but also in some other Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries jurisdictions to ensure face validity, content validity and cross cultural validity. Extensive piloting among all jurisdictions was limited by the need to develop the survey at the same time as jurisdictions were being recruited and adapting the survey for local use.
More extensive pilot testing was also limited by constraints of time and resources. Reliability selleck CHIR99021 testing was consequently difficult in the pilot stage due to small numbers of respondents in the pilot stages, but testing of consistency in the early stage of the actual survey showed a high level of consistency in the vignettes with the exception of the use of CT lung scans in the lung cancer vignettes. 9% of respondents ordering a lung CT to investigate the cases had stated that they did not have access to this test.