Referral practices survey

The National Centre for Gynaecological Cancers recently completed a national survey of general practitioners and gynaecologists to identify referral practices for women presenting with a suspected gynaecological cancer.

Clinicians were surveyed using vignettes that were constructed to represent patients who should be referred or not referred – based on the likelihood of cancer.

A decision to refer or not to refer a patient with a suspected gynaecological cancer is complex; involving a range of inter-related patient and clinician demographic factors. This study allowed the identification of key predictors of referral.

Findings indicate that patient variables played a far more important role in referral decisions than clinician demographic variables. However, there was still variation in referral practises amongst GPs and gynaecologists based on the patient factors included in this study.

There is a need for further research into understanding reasons for the variance in assessment of cancer risk based on these patient factors, including examining if there are markers for cancer that are being consistently ignored. This research could involve further analysis of the data from this study.