Australian women’s decision satisfaction following the selection of treatment for early breast cancer

AIM: Following a breast cancer diagnosis, women’s cognitive resources and abilities are often overloaded; subsequently they often feel distressed and confused about making the treatment choice between the medical and surgical options offered to them by doctors. Women frequently turn to nurses for decision support and information at this time. Nurses currently do not have evidence-based guidelines to guide this decision support to these women. Unfortunately, there are few Australian studies currently published, which measure women’s decision satisfaction after choosing treatment for early breast cancer.\ud \ud METHOD: This presentation will discuss the findings of a descriptive study investigating women’s (n= 104) decision satisfaction, three months following their initial surgery for early breast cancer. Data were collected using the Treatment Decision Satisfaction Questionnaire (TDSQ, Budden & Pierce, 2002). The TDSQ contains 16 items (α= 0.95) divided into two dimensions namely: 7 items measuring patients satisfaction with their decision process (α= 0.91) and 9 items measuring their satisfaction with their decision outcome (α= 0.95). \ud \ud RESULTS: Analyses indicated over half (53.7%) of the women agreed, or strongly agreed, with all the Decision Process Satisfaction items; 67.8% of women agreed, or strongly agreed, with all the Decision Outcome Satisfaction items; and 55.9% agreed, or strongly agreed, with all the Global Decision Satisfaction items.\ud \ud DISCUSSION: Many women are dissatisfied with their treatment decision after early breast cancer and are at risk of experiencing post-decision regret and psychological morbidity.\ud \ud CONCLUSION: This study provides information about women’s decision satisfaction, which can be used to evaluate future decision support intervention given by nurses.\u