Samenvatting

Prostate cancer (PCA) has the highest prevalence for men in the western world. Besides general symptoms, these patients experience specific problems like erectyle dysfunction and urinary incontinence, which occur after treatment and may result in feelings of distress. PCA patients express a need for supportive care, although they are often not participating in the offered supportive care interventions. To study determinants of care seeking behavior, the influence of patient’s supportive care needs was assessed with the SCNS. With the ASE-model, we studied whether their attitude about supportive care, perceived social support and self-efficacy influence care seeking. Furthermore also the influence of external factors, e.g. distress, biographical and medical factors, previous experience with and evaluation of supportive care was studied.

Methods
A quantitative, cross-sectional study with a convenience sample of patients who completed a questionnaire was conducted. The SCNS measured care needs. Patient’s attitude towards care seeking, perceived social support and self-efficacy were assessed as well as several external factors.

Results
We included 87 patients, who returned a questionnaire by email or post. Pearson’s correlation coefficients showed significant associations between the future supportive care use and attitude, needs, and external factors depression, anxiety, previous experience with and evaluation of supportive care and age. Results of multiple regression analysis pointed out that psychological, physical needs and depression are the main determinants for future supportive care use.

Conclusion
The results show psychological, physical needs and depression are more important determinants of future supportive care use than ASE-factor attitude towards care seeking, anxiety, previous psychosocial care use, satisfaction with care and age. Results indicated that men look for expert information in more than one third of all cases. Urology/oncology nurses and health-care professionals could use this information for patient centered referrals and to further develop needs and preference based interventions.