The role of communication in breast cancer screening: a qualitative study with Australian experts

Table 1 Characteristics of experts

	Participants 33 (Experts who were invited but did not-participate 13)
Professional role^a	Clinicians^b15 (3)	Oncologists 3 (1)
		Surgeons 4 (0)
		Breast physicians 1 (2)
		Radiologists 2 (0)
		Radiation oncologists 2 (0)
		Pathologists 3 (0)
		Other 0 (1)
	Non-clinical researchers 14 (3)	Epidemiologists/biostatisticians 9 (1)
		Other 5 (1)
	Administrators/managers 6 (2)	6 (2)
	Advocacy leaders 6 (7)	Consumers working in advocacy 3 (6)
		Clinicians/researchers working in advocacy 3 (1)
Public stance on breast screening^c	Supportive 16 (9)
	Mostly supportive^d 3 (1)
	Critical 6 (0)
	Unknown to researchers 8 (3)

^anote that some experts held more than one professional role, for this reason the numbers attached to specific professional roles do not neatly add up to n = 33 (participants) or n = 13 (experts invited but not participating)
^bmost clinicians engaged in research to a greater or lesser extent
^cWe loosely categorised potential interviewees as being “supportive”, “mostly supportive” or “critical” about breast screening based on publicly available commentary
^dbroadly supportive of breast screening but with selected concerns about one or more elements of the program

ISSN: 1471-2407