Publications by authors named "Mia Austria"
Decisions around prostate-specific antigen screening require a patient-centred approach, considering the benefits and risks of potential harm. Using shared decision-making (SDM) can improve men's knowledge and reduce decisional conflict. SDM is supported by evidence, but can be difficult to implement in clinical settings.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: A common method of pain assessment is the numerical rating scale, where patients are asked to rate their pain on a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 is "no pain" and 10 is "pain as bad as you can imagine". We hypothesize such language is suboptimal as it involves a test of a cognitive skill, imagination, in the assessment of symptom severity.
Methods: We used a large-scale online research registry, ResearchMatch, to conduct a randomized controlled trial to compare the distributions of pain scores of two different pain scale anchors.
Background/aims: It has been proposed that informed consent for randomized trials should be split into two stages, with the purported advantage of decreased information overload and patient anxiety. We compared patient understanding, anxiety and decisional quality between two-stage and traditional one-stage consent.
Methods: We approached patients at an academic cancer center for a low-stakes trial of a mind-body intervention for procedural distress during prostate biopsy.
Background: Patient-reported outcome measures for sexual health were often designed for research studies that included only heterosexual, partnered, and cisgender participants; as such, they may have limited applicability for clinical use among sexual and gender minority (SGM) individuals or those without a partner.
Aim: We aimed to conduct cognitive interviews with SGM persons and heterosexual women to determine the readability, comprehension, and applicability of questionnaire items to assess sexual function among diverse sexual and gender identities.
Methods: We conducted 4 rounds of cognitive interviews with 52 participants (28 SGM; 24 cisgender, heterosexual) who provided feedback on the comprehension and wording of questionnaire items and response scales.
Article Synopsis
- Researchers evaluated patient perceptions of a Web-based decision aid for localized prostate cancer treatment, using cognitive interviews to gather feedback.
- Patients expressed mixed feelings, noting emotional reactions to the tool's language while finding its value in helping them clarify preferences.
- A notable disconnect was observed between patients' negative experiences during the process and their overall satisfaction with the final decision output, suggesting the need for further studies on this phenomenon.
Background: Patient-reported outcome instruments to assess sexual functioning typically assume that patients are heterosexual and have a single sexual partner, thus they may have limited applicability for sexual and gender minority (SGM) populations as well as for nonpartnered individuals or those with multiple partners.
Aim: To explore the perceptions of SGM persons regarding the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI), a commonly used sexual functioning questionnaire.
Methods: We conducted 2 rounds of cognitive interviews with 27 SGM persons with and without a cancer diagnosis.