Budden, Lea M., Pierce, Penny F., Hayes, Barbara A., and Buettner, Petra G. (2003) Australia women's prediagnostic decision making styles relating to treatment choices for early breast cancer. Research and Theory for Nursing Practice, 17 (2). pp. 117-136.

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Abstract

Women diagnosed with early breast cancer are now asked by their doctors to choose from a range of options their preferred medical treatment plan. Little information is known about women’s treatment decision-making and therefore, nurses do not have evidence to guide this decision support. The aim of this descriptive survey was to investigate the pre-diagnostic decision-making behaviour of a sample (N=377) of Australian women, in regard to their treatment choices for early breast cancer. The data were collected using the Pre-Decision Portfolio Questionnaire (PDPQ) by Pierce (1996) which includes the Michigan Assessment of Decision Styles (MADS). Of 366 participating women, 19.9% strongly agreed to all three items of the MADS factor Deferring Responsibility, 0.3% strongly agreed to all four factors of Avoidance, 32.7% strongly agreed on all four items of Information Seeking, and 63.4% strongly agreed to all five items of Deliberation.Women showed a variety of referred decision styles, depending on age, education, occupation and employment status. Only 36% of women indicated it was critically important to, “get the treatment over as soon as possible”; 55% to “participate in selecting treatment”; and 53% to “read a lot of information”. The understanding of factors that are important to women when they are making decisions for medical treatment, is a mandatory step to design customized evidence based decision support, which can delivered by nurses to help women during this distressing experience..

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