Scottish Radiotherapy Patient Experience Survey 2014: National Results: Volume 1

5 RESULTS: WEBSITE INFORMATION

Summary

5.1 While only a minority of patients (16%) looked for information about radiotherapy on hospital websites, the vast majority of those who did found it very helpful (69%) or fairly helpful (30%). Of those patients who didn't look for information on hospital websites, a large proportion (26%) said that they didn't have internet access; and 19% said that they didn't know there was information there.

Detailed results

5.2 Most of the questions in this section were information questions, so they were intended to find out about how many people accessed information on line and if not, their reasons for not doing so. While numbers using the website for information purposes were relatively low, most of these found the information helpful, as shown in table 3 below.

Table 3 Summary of the results to questions about website information

Note: percentages may not add up to 100% due to rounding

5.3 Responses were generally positive:

• Of those who did look for information about radiotherapy on the cancer centre or hospital website, 69% said that it was very helpful, and 30% said that it was fairly helpful (chart 6).

5.4 When asked why patients didn't look on the hospital website for information there was a mix of reasons:

• Of those patients who didn't look for information on hospital websites, a large proportion (26%) said that they didn't have internet access; 19% said that they didn't know there was information there; 32% said that they didn't need to access information; and 18% said that they didn't want to. 5% of patients said that there was some other reason.

Chart 6 Information on the hospital website helpful (%)

Variation between centres

5.5 In the main there was little variation between the five radiotherapy centres. The exception was on the question about information on hospital website:

• Information on the hospital website helpful - scores ranged from 89% to 100% positive with Aberdeen Radiotherapy Centre, Dundee Cancer Centre and Edinburgh Cancer Centre scoring particularly well.