Health professionals? perspective about women?s experiences during the diagnostic process of ovarian cancer in Catalonia: Qualitative study

Objective: To identify missed opportunities in the diagnosis of ovarian cancer (OC) in the public health system of Catalonia, through the analysis of the perceptions of health professionals on the stories's experiences of OC patients. Design: Qualitative exploratory-descriptive study, with two focus groups. Setting: Primary Care, November 2017. Participants: Thirty-four professionals based on theoretical sampling: 21 family doctors, 8 professionals from sexual and reproductive health centres and 5 hospital gynaecologists. Methods: Participants discussed the different diagnostic pathways for women with OC through the presentation of flowcharts which were developed with three storie's and experiences of OC patients. Results: Three themes with various sub-themes were identified as follow: a) lack of cancer diagnostic suspicion (lack of knowledge of symptoms of OC, anamnesis and physical examination overlooked, fragmentation of patient's care and bias and prejudice); b) difficulties in activating the diagnostic process (limited access to tests, unequal accessibility to gynaecology and lack of follow-up); and c) absence of fast-track referral system. Conclusions: The results offer insight into the difficulties of early diagnosis of OC in our set-ting. We believe that their identification will allow the development of strategies to improve diagnostic accuracy and quality of care for women with OC in our setting. (c) 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Espana, S.L.U. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).