Study design

We designed a survey for patients with thyroid cancer to be answered anonymously (supplementary material). The design was based on previous surveys of patient satisfaction in oncology [7]. Before general release, several patients who were members of the Board of Directors of AECAT vetted the survey. The survey was divided into two sections: (1) demographic and clinical questions (gender, age, community of residence, education level, type of cancer and extent of the disease at diagnosis, type of hospital, therapies used, chronic complications from therapies, and disease status at time of survey); and (2) questions about patient satisfaction with the specialists who they visited, the health centers and departments they attended, and the information the respondents received about their illness, therapies and complications (supplementary material).

The strategy for creating the survey questions was designed to anonymize each interviewee. It was designed to be answered in no more than 10–15 min. Many questions were multiple choice with the possibility of choosing one or more of the answers. To avoid bias in the multiple-choice questions, attempts were made to avoid phrases that might elicit a particular response. A wide range of options arranged alphabetically or randomly was included.