Focus groups with cancer patients: Toward a more comprehensive understanding of the cancer experience

Six focus groups of 58 individuals (30 women and 28 men) were held in 3 Canadian cities to help develop a survey instrument to be implemented nationally to identify cancer patients' experiences with cancer: treatment, symptoms and symptom management. Patient participants had different cancer diagnoses, but their experience with cancer had been within the year preceding the study. Our intent was to identify as many themes as possible to allow for comparison of different experiences in a national survey. This paper reports on what was learned substantively from these focus groups and discusses the methodological contribution of focus groups in developing survey tools.