What do patients really want to know?

e18261 Background: We describe and analyze the quantity, nature and spectrum of questions asked by patients at consultation for radiotherapy to clarify the volume of questions that patients have and to inform the extent to which pre-composed non-personalized educational material is sufficient. Methods: With IRB approval, we retrospectively reviewed records of consultations that were performed by a single radiation oncologist from 2012 to 2016. Patients had been asked to list all of their questions exhaustively, which were then documented. To define topics for data abstraction, questions were extracted from records of a pilot group from the initial six-month period. One hundred and seventy five questions were obtained and were condensed into 57 information topics that were further grouped in to 34 themes, nine subjects and 2 broad areas. Results: A total of 2,386 questions were posed by 396 patients. The median number of questions asked per patients was 6, range 0 to 16 and interquartile range 4. There were 878 disease-related questions (36.8% of all questions) and 1,358 radiation modality-related questions (56.9% of all questions). The frequency of questions on each of nine subjects is listed in the Table. Conclusions: It is important to elicit all patients’ questions and concerns during consultation. Since almost 40% of all questions were disease-related regarding the details of the individual’s tumor, pre-composed non-personalized educational material is not sufficient. The 3 most frequently asked subjects also cannot be adequately given as a set on non-personalized information: they require details of their individualized radiotherapy logistics, side effects and radiation technical details. Further study is needed to measure the amount of time and effort required to evaluate and manage the information needed and whether the practice of personalization of information merits additional reimbursement or coverage. [Table: see text]