Recommendation recall and satisfaction after attending breast/ovarian cancer risk counseling

This study examined women's recall of physician recommendations as well as patient satisfaction following participation in a breast/ovarian cancer risk and prevention program. Participants were 41 high risk women who attended a cancer risk program 4-6 months earlier. Two-thirds of women who received recommendations for tamoxifen treatment and genetic testing did not recall these recommendations upon follow-up. A number of women misunderstood recommendations and a quarter of the sample recalled recommendations that were not made during the consultation. Although these high risk women were generally satisfied with their counseling visit, those individuals who received particularly complex sets of recommendations reported feeling less understood and were less satisfied with the counseling. Findings underline the importance of examining recommendation recall, in addition to perceptions of cancer risk, when evaluating the clinical implications of cancer risk assessment.