Caring for Alaska Native prostate cancer survivors in primary care: a survey of Alaska Tribal Health System providers.

Tilburt, Jon C

Kelley, Stacy

DeCourtney, Christine A

Humeniuk, Katherine M

Latini, Jerilyn

Kim, Simon P

United States

2015-01-26T19:28:21Z

2014

BACKGROUND: Little is known about the constraints of optimizing health care for prostate cancer survivors in Alaska primary care. OBJECTIVE: To describe the experiences and attitudes of primary care providers within the Alaska Tribal Health System (ATHS) regarding the care of prostate cancer survivors. DESIGN: In late October 2011, we emailed a 22-item electronic survey to 268 ATHS primary care providers regarding the frequency of Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) monitoring for a hypothetical prostate cancer survivor; who should be responsible for the patient's life-long prostate cancer surveillance; who should support the patient's emotional and medical needs as a survivor; and providers' level of comfort addressing recurrence monitoring, erectile dysfunction, urinary incontinence, androgen deprivation therapy, and emotional needs. We used simple logistic regression to examine the association between provider characteristics and their responses to the survivorship survey items. RESULTS: Of 221 individuals who were successfully contacted, a total of 114 responded (52% response rate). Most ATHS providers indicated they would order a PSA test every 12 months (69%) and believed that, ideally, the hypothetical patient's primary care provider should be responsible for his life-long prostate cancer surveillance (60%). Most providers reported feeling either "moderately" or "very" comfortable addressing topics such as prostate cancer recurrence (59%), erectile dysfunction (64%), urinary incontinence (63%), and emotional needs (61%) with prostate cancer survivors. These results varied somewhat by provider characteristics including female sex, years in practice, and the number of prostate cancer survivors seen in their practice. CONCLUSIONS: These data suggest that most primary care providers in Alaska are poised to assume the care of prostate cancer survivors locally. However, we also found that large minorities of providers do not feel confident in their ability to manage common issues in prostate cancer survivorship, implying that continued access to specialists with more expert knowledge would be beneficial.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24596707

23637

2242-3982

https://hdl.handle.net/10161/9379

eng

Informa UK Limited

Int J Circumpolar Health

10.3402/ijch.v73.23637

Alaska Native

cancer survivorship

prostate cancer

Aged

Alaska

Continuity of Patient Care

Delivery of Health Care

Health Care Surveys

Humans

Logistic Models

Male

Middle Aged

Outcome Assessment (Health Care)

Pilot Projects

Population Groups

Primary Health Care

Program Evaluation

Prostatic Neoplasms

Risk Assessment

Surveys and Questionnaires

Survivors

Caring for Alaska Native prostate cancer survivors in primary care: a survey of Alaska Tribal Health System providers.

Journal article

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24596707

23637

Duke

Staff

Published online

73