Abstract

Objective: This study was designed to determine the beliefs and attitudes of physicians dealing with cancer patients about quality of life.

Materials and methods: For determining the beliefs and attitudes of physicians about quality of life, a 32-item questionnaire was developed, inspired by the questionnaire developed by Bezjak et al. Two diverse specialties of physicians were enrolled, including 44 urologists, and 73 chest physicians. 

Results: It was found that all physicians had positive beliefs about quality of life, but they mainly relied on their own clinical experience instead of scales. When the two groups were compared, chest physicians seemed to accord more importance to prolong the patients’ survival and to biological parameters in choosing the treatment than did urologists.

Conclusion: All physicians dealing with cancer care have positive attitudes towards quality of life assessments. Chest physicians weight quality of life as a low-rank issue compared to urologists in the care of cancer patients. This seems to be due to high mortality rates of lung cancer.