Waiting time at a fast-track diagnostic clinic

Guidelines stating maximum waiting times fail to take cancer patients’ expectations into account. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to assess patients’ expectations and experiences with their waiting time at a fast-track clinic.

Patients were selected using a purposeful sampling strategy and were interviewed four times: before the visit; one day after; two weeks after the visit; and one week after starting treatment. Interviews were audiotaped and independently coded by two researchers.

All patients (n=9) preferred a short waiting time before the first visit; they feared that their disease would spread and believed that cancer warrants priority treatment. Six patients experienced the waiting time as short, one had no expectations and two felt they waited longer than expected; three patients changed this evaluation during the study. Six patients received treatment – four preferred to wait before treatment and two wanted to start treatment immediately. Reasons to wait included putting one’s affairs in order, or needing to adjust to the diagnosis.

Cancer patients prefer a short waiting time before the first visit but have different expectations and needs regarding waiting time before treatment. Ideally, their expectations are managed by their treating physician to match waiting time reality.

This is the first study to assess cancer patients’ waiting time experiences and how these experiences change over time. This study paves the way for establishing a framework to better assess patient satisfaction with oncology care waiting time. An important aspect, is managing patients’ expectations.