Patients' confidence in their GP before and after being diagnosed with cancer

General practice plays an important role in the cancer care pathway. The initial diagnostic phase may be crucial for the relationship between the patient and the GP.

The aim was to describe whether patients' confidence in their GP changed after a cancer diagnosis, and analyse whether the change in confidence was associated with doctor delay.

Population-based cohort study with 1892 questionnaires sent to patients and their GPs in general practices in the former Aarhus County, Denmark.

Information on patients' confidence in their GP was obtained from the patient questionnaire. Information on doctor delay was obtained from the GPs and defined as a period of 14 days or more from the date of first symptom presentation to the GP until cancer-specific investigation was initiated.

Before the cancer diagnosis, 88.4% of the patients had confidence in their GP, which decreased to 80.0% after the diagnosis (P<0.001); 15.8% of the patients who experienced no doctor delay reported a decrease in confidence after the cancer diagnosis, compared with 29.1% of the patients with a doctor delay (P<0.001). Patients presenting with alarm symptoms and experiencing doctor delay were 3.8 times more likely to lose confidence compared with those presenting with alarm symptoms who experienced no doctor delay (P = 0.048).

The majority of the patients had high levels of confidence in their GP before, as well as after, the cancer diagnosis. Nevertheless, a substantial amount had low confidence in the GP, especially when experiencing doctor delay in the initial phase of the pathway.