Objective To investigate the attitudes of Chinese doctors towards the difficulties they have concerning the involvement of patients in decision-making about treatment. Method We surveyed 1 088 doctors at different levels (70% internal medicine, 22% general surgery, 8% gynecology) from 20 general hospitals and 5 university hospitals covering 25 provinces and cities in China, using a simple questionnaire, which we had developed. Results A total of 780 doctors returned the questionnaire and of these only 488 (62%) had completed it. The difficulties that doctors were most concerned about focused on lack of time (27%), expressing uncertainties to patients (15%), dealing with patients who have little medical knowledge (13%), eliciting patients’ preferences (12%), and establishing a stable relationship (9%). Conclusion Increasing their knowledge of patient involvement in making treatment decisions may reinforce appropriate attitudes towards this concept among doctors.
Objective To explore the factors which affect shared decision-making and develop strategies to get patients actively involved in clinical decision-making. Methods We conducted a survey on 566 patients of a Class A Hospital in Sichuan with group random sampling method. The data were collected by the use of anonymous selfadministered questionnaires. We used SPSS 10.0 to analyse the data. Results A total of 600 questionnaires were distributed at random, of which 565 were completed. There were 68% patients who had some knowledge of the disease, and 93% who were willing to participate in clinical decision-making. The patients’ biggest concerns were: treatment effect, cost and doctors’ skills. The biggest difficulties that patients worried about were: long-time waiting in out-patient departments and limited time to communicate with doctors. Conclusion As more and more patients would like to involve in shared decision-making, doctors need to provide patients with more choices and help them make a right decision in their treatment.
Objective To investigate baseline data of the current status of patients in China, and thus to develop strategies to get patients involved in evidence-based medicine (EBM). Method 300 questionnaires with 17 questions were distributed to the in-patients in West China Hospital, Sichuan University. Statistical software such as SPASS 10. 0 was applied to analyze all the data. Results No patients had ever heard of EBM. Most patients did not know much information about their diseases, but had a b desire to learn from their doctors. Most of them would like to be involved in the treatment decision-making and hoped that their doctors would care about their preference. The cost and the effectiveness of the treatment were the most important issues that patient concerned about. Conclusions The dissemination of health information is very limited for patients and the accessibility of effective health information depends much on the direct communication with their doctors. Promoting patient involved in EBM is fairly a hard and long way to go based on the actual reality of the country.
Cohort study is the observational study with the highest strength of causality demonstration, which is often used to test the etiological hypothesis and determine the risk factors of diseases. However, it often takes a lot of manpower, material and financial resources to carry out a cohort study, and it is time-consuming. At the same time, due to the long follow-up time, it is difficult to maintain the compliance of the study population, which is prone to loss to follow-up bias. In recent years, driven by network technology, a new type of cohort study design, e-cohort study, has gradually emerged, which is based on the network to recruit participants, follow up and collect data. Taking advantage of the wide coverage and high flexibility of the network, it provides a new strategy for improving the recruitment speed, participant participation and compliance of cohort study. This article summarizes the development history, current status, key points of design and implementation, advantages and challenges of e-cohort study, so as to help researchers to fully understand and apply this study design to solve practical clinical problems.