Help seeking for cancer 'alarm' symptoms: a qualitative interview study of primary care patients in the UK

Background: Delay in help seeking for cancer 'alarm' symptoms has been identified as a contributor to delayed diagnosis.

Aim: To understand people's help-seeking decision making for cancer alarm symptoms, without imposing a cancer context.

Design and setting: Community-based, qualitative interview study in the UK, using purposive sampling by sex, socioeconomic status, and prior help seeking, with framework analysis of transcripts.

Method: Interviewees (n = 48) were recruited from a community-based sample (n = 1724) of adults aged ≥50 years who completed a health survey that included a list of symptoms. Cancer was not mentioned. Participants reporting any of 10 cancer alarm symptoms (n = 915) and who had consented to contact (n = 482) formed the potential pool from which people were invited to an interview focusing on their symptom experiences.

Results: Reasons for help seeking included symptom persistence, social influence, awareness/fear of a link with cancer, and 'just instinct'. Perceiving the symptom as trivial or 'normal' was a deterrent, as was stoicism, adopting self-management strategies, and fear of investigations. Negative attitudes to help seeking were common. Participants did not want to be seen as making a fuss, did not want to waste the doctor's time, and were sometimes not confident that the GP could help.

Conclusion: Decision making about cancer alarm symptoms was complex. Recognition of cancer risk almost always motivated help seeking (more so than the fear of cancer being a deterrent), assisted by recent public-awareness campaigns. As well as symptom persistence motivating help seeking, it could also have the reverse effect. Negative attitudes to help seeking were significant deterrents.