Effectiveness of a Patient Education Class to Enhance Knowledge about Lung Cancer Screening: a Quality Improvement Evaluation.

Sakoda LC, Meyer MA, Chawla N, Sanchez MA, Blatchins MA, Nayak S, San K, Zin GK, Minowada G, Permanente Medical Group Lung Cancer Screening Task Force. Effectiveness of a Patient Education Class to Enhance Knowledge about Lung Cancer Screening: a Quality Improvement Evaluation. Journal of Cancer Education : The Official Journal of The American Association For Cancer Education. 2020 Oct 1; 35(5):897-904.

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Abstract:

Best practices to facilitate high-quality shared decision-making for lung cancer screening (LCS) are not well established. In our LCS program, patients are first referred to attend a free group education class on LCS, taught by designated clinician specialists, before a personal shared decision-making visit is scheduled. We conducted an evaluation on  the effectiveness of this class to enhance patient knowledge and shared decision-making about LCS. For quality improvement purposes, participants were asked to complete one-page surveys immediately before and after class to assess knowledge and decision-making capacity regarding LCS. To evaluate knowledge gained, we tabulated the distributions of correct, incorrect, unsure, and missing responses to eight true-false statements included on both pre- and post-class surveys and assessed pre-post differences in the number of correct responses. To evaluate decision-making capacity, we tabulated the distributions of post-class responses to items on decision uncertainty. From June 2017 to August 2018, 680 participants completed both pre- and post-class surveys. Participants had generally poor baseline knowledge about LCS. The proportion who responded correctly to each knowledge-related statement increased pre- to post-class, with a mean difference of 0.9 (paired t test, p < 0.0001) in the total number of correct responses between surveys. About 70% reported having all the information needed to make a screening decision. Our results suggest that a well-designed group education class is an effective system-level approach for initially educating and equipping patients with appropriate knowledge to make informed decisions about LCS.