How to start the conversation with your patients
Use these questions as a guide to get insight into your patient’s history, values, and preferences. Then, you can make a decision about the PSA test together.
- What comes to mind when you think about prostate health?
- What have you heard about prostate cancer?
- Has anyone in your family had prostate cancer?
- How concerned are you about getting prostate cancer?
- What comes up for you when thinking about prostate cancer screening?
- Have you ever been screened for prostate cancer?
- Do you have any concerns about getting screened for prostate cancer?
Stay up to date with current guidelines
Review the current prostate cancer screening guidelines from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.
Understand race as a risk factor
Black non-Hispanic men are 1.5 times more likely to have prostate cancer than White non-Hispanic men. They are also two times more likely to die from prostate cancer. This is due to a combination of factors partly stemming from structural racism, such as differences in socio-economic status and access to good health care.
Healthy behaviors can help reduce a person’s cancer risk. Examples include healthy eating, physical activity, avoiding tobacco, and limiting alcohol use. However, a person’s environment also affects cancer risk. A person’s environment can make it difficult to practice healthy behaviors. The conditions where a person is born, lives, learns, works, and ages, are known as the social determinants of health (SDoH). SDoH impact a wide range of quality-of-life and health outcomes, including cancer. Socioeconomic status, education, and neighborhood disadvantages are SDoH that may increase prostate cancer risk. Structural racism impacts these factors, which leads to a higher prostate cancer risk for Black men.
Integrate shared decision making into conversations with patients
Shared decision making is when patients and providers make health care decisions together. The process uses the provider’s knowledge, the scientific information available, and the patient’s values and goals.
In shared decision making, providers share options with the patient and talk about the benefits and harms of a PSA test. Then, they help the patient weigh the options and make a decision.
Explore resources to support shared decision making conversations
Get the Latest Facts About Screening for Prostate Cancer
Should You Get the PSA Test?
Patients and their providers can review decision aids together during a patient visit, and/or a patient can review them at home. You can download or order the decision making tools at no cost from the Massachusetts Health Promotion Clearinghouse. They are available in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Haitian Creole.
Watch video examples of shared decision making in prostate cancer screening
The two videos below show a patient and provider using shared decision making for prostate cancer screening. The videos show examples of patients with different risks. They also show the steps of shared decision making in a usual patient interaction.
When patients are deciding if the PSA test is right for them, there is no right or wrong answer. Patients should think about their risk, the benefits and possible harms, and their preferences. Shared decision making can help you and your patient have this discussion. Decision aids can help this conversation.
Video: Average risk for prostate cancer
Skip this video Average risk for prostate cancer.Video: High risk for prostate cancer
Skip this video High risk for prostate cancer.Take a Continuing Medical Education course
A Continuing Medical Education course, Racial Differences in Prostate Cancer Outcomes, is offered through the Massachusetts Medical Society. The course goes over identifying and assessing prostate cancer disparities and evaluating solutions to address disparities in cancer treatment and outcomes.