Understanding Women’s Anxiety and Uncertainty attending a Rapid Diagnostic Clinic for Suspicious Breast Abnormality: A Mixed Methods Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Rapid diagnostic centres (RDC) for breast abnormality offer a speedier process from the discovery of a suspicious breast lump to same-day investigation and confirmation of a breast cancer diagnosis. Study purpose: This proof of concept study aimed to assess the anxiety and uncertainty levels of women going through an RDC and explore women's need for support during the diagnostic period. Methods: Thirteen women who attended an RDC in 2013 took part in a sequential mixed-method study to assess anxiety and uncertainty levels. Measures were taken pre-and post-testing, at three weeks following receipt of results, and were followed by a semi-structured telephone interview. Results: The mixed data results show congruency between women scoring above clinical values for anxiety and above normative values for uncertainty and detailing their RDC experience as stressful. At pre-diagnosis, uncertainty and anxiety levels were above clinical and normative values for the majority of the thirteen women. Among the women who received a cancer diagnosis (7/13), five had high anxiety, and two scored above normative values for uncertainty. Among the women with a benign diagnosis (6/13), all had anxiety scores below clinical levels, and three had scores above normative values for uncertainty. Anxiety and uncertainty levels remained relatively the same from the three days to three weeks post-testing. The women suggested the need to receive details of the day's unfolding, especially what medical procedures will take place, how, and why, and in advance of the day of testing. Conclusion: While RDCs offer women with a suspicious breast lump the opportunity for quicker diagnostic testing, preliminary results suggest that the period leading up to the day of testing and three days and three weeks post-testing is marked with anxiety and uncertainty levels above clinical and normative values. The results illustrate the need for further inquiry into the psychological impact of obtaining testing at RDCs for a breast abnormality. Results suggest a potential role for nurses to support the waiting period with psycho-educational guidance and resources.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.019 | 0.024 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".