Promoting Shared-decision Making in Opportunistic Screening for Prostate Cancer (PROSHADE)

Prostate cancer (PC) screening using Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) has led to a reduction in advanced disease and disease-specific mortality. However, screening with PSA can also cause harm and is associated with false-positive results and overdiagnosis.

Shared-decision making (SDM) has been defined as the key to successful patient-centered care. The promotion SDM when deciding on PSA screening will have proximal effects such as the development of collaborative deliberation between clinicians and patients, resulting in well-informed patients and in preference-based decisions. As long term effects, it will result in safer, cost-effective, patient-aligned healthcare, and its distant effects will include improvements in resource use, planning processes and improved health outcomes.

The project includes a mixed-method approach. The investigators will perform a quantitative survey (cross-sectional design) to evaluate the population, patients' and clinicians' knowledge about the benefits and risks derived from the PSA determination and the available recommendations.

The investigators will apply qualitative analysis through focus groups, to explore the challenges patients and clinicians face to deep in a prostate screening discussion and to assess the adequacy of different implementation strategies.

The investigators will carry out a user-testing design based on mix-methods (questionnaire and semi-structured review) to evaluate the prototype of the initial decision-aid.

Finally, the investigators will carry out a cluster randomised controlled trial, to assess the results derived from the application of the decision-aid, together with a process evaluation using a combination of both qualitative and quantitative methods to monitor the fidelity of the intervention, the clusters' and patients' response to the intervention as well as the mechanisms of adaptation and change at the intervention.