Introduction
Collecting patients’ experiences with care provision is essential to evaluate the quality and safety of care in general, and patient-centeredness in particular, one of the core dimensions of high-quality care. In Switzerland, patient experience data are collected nationally through a short survey for inpatient acute care, rehabilitation care and psychiatric care. To date, we
lack data regarding cancer care, despite advocacy for specific surveys to account for the high complexity of cancer treatment pathways. Our main study objective was to conduct a cancer patient experience survey in the French-speaking part of Switzerland to provide robust evidence on the perceived quality of cancer care.
Methods
The Swiss Cancer Patient Experience (SCAPE) was a cross-sectional multicenter survey, conducted between October 2018 and March 2019, among cancer patients diagnosed with the six most frequent cancers, from four large cancer centers in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Data were collected with a self-administered questionnaire, including questions
on experiences of care adapted from the NHS Cancer Patient Experience Survey as well as questions on socio-demographic and clinical characteristics. Of the 7145 adult patients invited to complete the questionnaire, 3121 patients returned it (43.7% response rate). Of these, 2755 (88%) reported at least one eligible cancer (breast, prostate, lung, colorectal, melanoma, or hematological) and were included in the descriptive analyses. The study was approved by the Swiss local ethics committee (CER-VD).
Results
Patients rated their overall care at 8.5 on average (1.4 standard deviation) on a 0-10 scale. Over 80% of patients reported positive experiences with diagnostic tests, clinical nurse specialists, and hospital care as inpatient (e.g. confidence and trust in doctors, treated with respect and dignity, enough nurses on duty). However, less than 50% of patients reported
positive experiences in relation to the information received at diagnosis and about treatment side-effects and symptoms, and in relation to other supportive care issues, in particular regarding psycho-social, financial, family- and survivorship-related aspects of care.
Conclusion:
In this first overview of patient experiences with cancer care in French-speaking Switzerland, we identified areas of cancer care that are more positively and less positively evaluated by a large number of patients. Our results are currently being discussed with the participating cancer centers to guide local initiatives to further improve the quality and patientcenteredness
of cancer care in Switzerland.