Il parere dei pazienti circa la qualità del materiale informativo di carattere divulgativo: un'indagine in campo oncologico

The ultimate aim of an evaluation is the improvement of an activity: evaluations should be carried out via a concrete actions, based upon the collection of information and a research process. It is the willingness of those managing and running the service to honestly and rigorously question their own modus operandi in the light of feedback from the users of the service that will lead to any real improvement. This is the basic purpose of our survey conducted by the Cancer Information Point (CIP-LP) of the Library for Patients (LP) of the Centro di Riferimento Oncologico (CRO), Aviano, aiming at collecting the opinion of 121 patients concerning the quality of material they had received in reply to their information requests. The process, which is continually ongoing, was initiated in an empirical way in 1998, when the Library for patients was set up as a part of the Scientific Library, and then pursued in a more scientific way. The aim is to understand how the informational material supplied to patients by CIP-LP staff, and previously assessed by an internal Materials Evaluation Committee with proper evaluation tools, is assessed by the users. The answers to the questionnaire demonstrate total clarity of the information supplied for 64% of the sample, understandability (59%), usefulness (45%) and completeness (49%). Answers also suggest possible improvements to the questionnaire in order that the doctors' evaluation may be compared with the evaluation of the patients regarding the same document.