Table 2 Effectiveness of increasing patient knowledge

From: ‘I still don’t know diddly’: a longitudinal qualitative study of patients’ knowledge and distress while undergoing evaluation of incidental pulmonary nodules

Continued lack of knowledge

 Veteran N-V2

‘Right now I don’t know diddly about what it is or what may have caused it or, you know. I just don’t know.’

 Veteran B-V2

‘What possible future health risks they may cause? Like I said earlier, are they gonna mutate into something like a tumor or are they gonna be just a lump? Like a cyst? That’s what I’d really like to know, is just, is it something I need to worry about 10 years from now? Or I just put it in the ‘who cares’ file and move on?’

 Veteran P-V2

‘Well I had never heard of lung nodules to begin with. So I didn’t know what they were and I still don’t really know. I looked- I did a little research on them but I can’t really get a picture exactly of what they do or what they are.’

 Veteran K-V2

‘I don’t know nothing about it, just what they tell me. I don’t have any effects from it that I know of. Yeah I’d like to know myself what’s going on with it.’

Gain in knowledge

 Veteran B-V2

‘Yeah, [the PCP] explained what calcification meant, that that was an indication of how you can get nodules, why it’s likely that what I have is from other things that occurred earlier.’

 Veteran G-V2

‘I don’t know…I didn’t know what a nodule was, it took me a long time till I came in and talked to you [interviewer].’

 Veteran F-V2

‘In discussing it with my primary care, [the PCP] sort of just said that that seems to have been there before but, you know, that if nothing happened in terms of growth, in terms of anything serious, that [the PCP] would say that there’s no concern about it.’

  1. Abbreviations: PCP, primary care provider; V2, visit two.