The role of responsibility in oncological emergency telephone calls.

Background: Patients and their caregivers are expected to take joint responsibility for reporting symptoms and seeking medical assistance, for example, by calling oncology emergency telephones or other helplines during a cancer trajectory.

Research Objective: The aim was to explore the meaning of responsibility as it appeared in patients' or caregivers' experiences of calling an oncological emergency telephone.

Design, Participants And Context: Inspired by qualitative description and qualitative content analysis, a secondary analysis of data from interviews with 12 participants calling the oncological emergency telephone at a Danish university hospital was performed.