Assessment of content completeness and accuracy of prostate cancer patient education materials.

Providing care for men with prostate cancer is particularly challenging because of the controversy surrounding screening and the paucity of randomized control trials comparing treatments. Therefore, a patient's personal preferences, and adequate patient education become central to well-informed medical decision-making. Acknowledging the need for high quality education materials for men with prostate cancer, we developed and pilot tested a measure to assess the completeness and accuracy of available materials. The measure rates materials on their inclusion and accuracy of the primary knowledge base a patient should acquire before deciding on prostate cancer screening or treatment, to prepare for staging, and to manage treatment and disease-related symptoms. We found that many available prostate cancer education materials are factually accurate, but omit information that is important and relevant to patients with prostate cancer. Copyright 2003 Elsevier Ireland Ltd.