PROFOUND-Prostate will investigate how patients with prostate cancer from deprived and/or remote areas of Scotland perceive, experience, prioritise and contextualise changes in their functional ability, and what triggers (how and when) these patients to make decisions to seek help (or not) in relation to these changes.

Objectives:

  1. To understand how patients with prostate cancer from deprived and/or remote areas in Scotland understand, contextualise, and prioritise changes in their functional ability.
  2. To explore what triggers patients to respond to changes in functional ability and subsequently decide to seek or not seek help in a resource-challenged context.
  3. To investigate what distinct time patterns can be identified for functional ability that indicate ‘peak points’ of decline and need for support.
  4. To explore what sociodemographic and/or clinical factors may moderate those time patterns, thus pointing to patient subgroups at higher or lower risk for adverse outcomes.
  5. To explore how engagement with self-monitoring, reflection and response to changes in functional ability might be linked to patient activation to manage their own health, self-care self-efficacy, and aspects of health literacy.
  6. To explore what factors enable or hinder technology use in this patient population for ongoing self-reporting and health monitoring.
  7. To explore possible refinements to the tested model of health monitoring and motivational interviewing to guide plans for uptake by tertiary sector support services.

First published: 15 July 2025

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