Development and psychometric testing of a breast cancer patient-profiling questionnaire

摘要

IntroductionThe advent of “personalized medicine” has been driven by technological advances in genomics. Concentration at the subcellular level of a patient’s cancer cells has meant inevitably that the “person” has been overlooked. For this reason, we think there is an urgent need to develop a truly personalized approach focusing on each patient as an individual, assessing his/her unique mental dimensions and tailoring interventions to his/her individual needs and preferences. The aim of this study was to develop and test the psychometric properties of the ALGA-Breast Cancer (ALGA-BC), a new multidimensional questionnaire that assesses the breast cancer patient’s physical and mental characteristics in order to provide physicians, prior to the consultation, with a patient’s profile that is supposed to facilitate subsequent communication, interaction, and information delivery between the doctor and the patient.