Abstract
Background: Assessing the psychosocial, physical, and informational needs of any population of patients, and their perception on how these needs are being met, is an essential to planning an effective, comprehensive patient-centred cancer support program. However, to our knowledge, no patient-centered community health needs assessment of breast cancer patients has been performed in Saudi Arabia. The aim of this study is to develop a culturally valid, health needs assessment tool for use with the local breast cancer community. Methods: Data driven inductive thematic analysis of recorded semi structured interviews of local breast cancer patients was performed. The resulting identified themes were compared to themes present in existing tools and the extent of congruency compared. Results: From the shortlist of published needs assessment tools, "Cancer Survivor Unmet Needs" and "Supportive Care Needs Survey-Short Form" have been demonstrated to have a highest degree (8/10) of congruency with the themes identified by the local study group; and the "Cancer Survivor Unmet Needs" assessment tool was the best suited in overall format. Conclusion: The selected tool, "Cancer Survivor Unmet Needs", with the suggested modifications, has the necessary overall congruency of content to be developed as a tool for the service needs assessment of Saudi Breast Cancer Patients; establishing content validity helps ensure that the final health needs assessment tool is both comprehensive and culturally appropriate. A large-scale survey, using such a tool, would facilitate a patient centered approach to service development and provide an operational blueprint for possible future breast cancer service development projects in Saudi Arabia.