Oncological patient expectations of doctors and nursing staff

Background: The survey concerns expectations of oncological patients towards health-care personnel and perception of these expectations by doctors and nursing staff working with cancer patients. The results of the survey have been analysed in order to find disparities in the level of expectations.
Material and methods: The patients, the doctors and the nursing staff from the Maria Sklodowska-Curie Centre of Oncology in Warsaw took part in the pilot study (N = 43) as well as in the main research (N = 204). The respondents were asked to fill in a questionnaire (author’s own project) divided into two parts. The first part concerned respondents’ personal data and included an agreement to take part in the survey. Regarding the main hypothesis of the survey, the second part concerned the expectations of oncological patients towards the doctors and the nursing staff.
Results: Aggregated data show that the level of expectations towards doctors and the nursing staff varies and depends on the length of hospitalization and on patients’ sex. The variance with repeated measures analysis shows the inter­action between expected actions and examined groups.
Conclusions: The oncological patient expects mainly information from the doctors and the nursing staff. The nurses are more aware of patients’ emotional needs than patients themselves.