Shared Decision Making: Prostate Cancer Screening

Prostate cancer is an important cause of death and disability in US men, but the value of screening for the disease with the prostate specific antigen (PSA) test remains highly controversial. Many primary care physicians use PSA testing routinely, with little patient counseling. Interventions to Improve Shared Decision-Making: Prostate Cancer Screening is a prospective study of educational interventions to improve shared decision-making of physicians and their patients about prostate cancer screening. Physicians will be randomized by practice site to receive standard informational brochures (control group) or a novel web-based interactive curriculum that provides education about prostate cancer screening, including potential benefits and harms, fundamentals of effective patient counsel, and shared decision-making. In addition, patients at intervention sites will be randomized to receive either the brochure or a patient-oriented interactive curriculum covering content similar to that contained in the physician tool. The intervention will be evaluated among 140 physicians within a variety of primary care settings (i.e., University-based clinics, staff-model managed care clinics, and military affiliated outpatient clinics). Approximately 10-15 actual patients of each participating physician will complete a post-visit questionnaire describing their discussion with their doctor about prostate cancer, PSA, and their decision about whether to be screened. Physicians in all groups will also see one unannounced standardized patient (SP) trained to portray a patient interested in discussing PSA. Study groups will be compared on the extent of shared decision-making they engage in with both actual and standardized patients. Pre- and post-study changes in physician knowledge and attitudes about PSA as well as the physicians' pre- and post-study PSA test ordering rates will be ascertained.