Patients’ awareness on nuclear medicine studies- The impact of the SNMMI Value Initiative in Johannesburg, South Africa

Background: The value initiative (VI_e) as a strategic vision and roadmap was launched by the society of nuclear medicine and molecular imaging (SNMMI) in 2017 to advance the role of the discipline in the community. It is also well known that patients have a thirst for information regarding their health. Since some key elements in the quality of the practice of nuclear medicine (NM) and the outreach domains of the VI_e are set to promoting education of patients and colleagues, we have introduced videos loop run of NM studies in English and other four of the eleven official languages in our department. This study is done to assess the impact of our contribution towards the effort of the SNMMI to educate patients and referring doctors, particularly on patients’ views and understanding of NM scans.

Methods: Over a period of ten working days, we submitted a questionnaire in the early morning between 7:00 and 8:00 am to patients scheduled for scans. After collecting the completed questionnaires, we switched on the TVs with videos on general NM, PET/CT, Bone scan, Myocardial Perfusion Imaging and renal scintigraphy in the different languages as mentioned above. We have three sets of big screen TV (49” LCD monitors) that are linked each to a loop add video system where they are displayed in the main waiting rooms of the department. When patients completed their scans and still in the camera rooms, they were requested to fill a second questionnaire to assess the improvement of their understanding of NM and also gather their views related to NM.

Results: In total 129 of the 158 submitted questionnaires (81.6%) were completed and the responders are aged between 18 and 84 years (mean=55.04±15.75) with a relative female dominance (57.3%). About two-thirds of responders (62%) were having the scan for the first time, but almost all (96.8%) were aware of the type of scan they were sent for. Although a majority (58.9%) stated that they were informed about the scan by the referring physician, almost a similar proportion (57.3%) did not know what to expect about the scan, and only less than a third (28.6%) had some idea about the scan. However, the vast majority (86.6%) stated that they would like to learn more about their scans, preferably from either the NM physician/technologist (38.7%) or by watching a video (38.6%) or both (4.6%) as compared to reading a pamphlet (17.1%) or from a website posting (1%). At the end, 108 responders stated that they partially or fully watched the video (83.7%). There was a highly significant difference in the number of responders who worried about the scan before and after watching the video (p=0.0039). Most importantly, almost two-thirds (62.8%) stated that they prefer learning more about the scan by way of watching a video.

Conclusions: This study shows the need to educate both patients and referring physicians, especially on information that explain what to expect regarding the different types of scans. The paucity of information given by the referring physicians indicates that we should engage our colleagues who are the first point of contact to patients referred for scans. Video clips are probably the best method to promote education of NM studies. Finally, we believe that all NM professionals should embrace the SNMMI value initiative project and implement elements that may alter how patients and referring physicians perceive the role of NM and the safety of its procedures in their different geographic regions.