早期癌症的诊断增加了生存的可能性，而进展较为严重的癌症更难以成功治疗。基层医疗医生（Primary care practitioners, PCPs）在癌症的及时诊断中起着关键作用。PCPs对其患者群体和卫生系统的了解可以帮助改善更早地识别和转诊癌症的有效方法的规划。当PCPs面对可能患有癌症的患者时，他们的行动可能取决于他们所处的卫生系统的组织方式，这可能是解释欧洲各国癌症生存率差异较大的一个原因。为了识别和描述那些PCPs认为在改善癌症诊断时效性方面很重要的因素的国家集群。我们进行了一项基于在线调查的定性数据的集群分析。PCPs回答了一个开放式调查问题，探讨了如何改善基层医疗癌症诊断速度的问题。根据编码和主题分析，我们确定了每个国家在一个主题中的项目被提及的次数。k-means聚类方法确定了PCPs认为最重要的主题的国家集群。事后检验探索了这些集群之间的差异。在20个欧洲国家的25个一级保健中心。每个中心被要求至少招募50名参与者。每个国家的基层医疗从业者。总共，有1,351名PCPs提供了自由文本回答。我们确定了十八个主题来组织回答的内容。根据主题的频率，k-means聚类确定了三个国家群体。这些集群之间在以下方面的重要性上存在显著差异：检查的可获得性（p = 0.010）；专科医生的可获得性（p = 0.014）；筛查（p < 0.001）以及财务、指标和限制（p < 0.001）。我们的研究确定了三个不同的欧洲国家集群，在这些集群中，PCPs对于提高癌症诊断时效性的因素具有相似的观点。还需要进一步的工作来了解是什么因素造成了这些模式的产生，并通过之间的最佳实践分享和减少差距来改善卫生系统。© 2023年，BioMed Central Ltd.，Springer Nature的一部分。

Diagnosing cancer at an early stage increases the likelihood of survival, and more advanced cancers are more difficult to treat successfully. Primary care practitioners (PCPs) play a key role in timely diagnosis of cancer. PCPs' knowledge of their own patient populations and health systems could help improve the planning of more effective approaches to earlier cancer recognition and referral. How PCPs act when faced with patients who may have cancer is likely to depend on how their health systems are organised, and this may be one explanation for the wide variation on cancer survival rates across Europe.To identify and characterise clusters of countries whose PCPs perceive the same factors as being important in improving the timeliness of cancer diagnosis.A cluster analysis of qualitative data from an online survey was carried out. PCPs answered an open-ended survey question on how the speed of diagnosis of cancer in primary care could be improved. Following coding and thematic analysis, we identified the number of times per country that an item in a theme was mentioned. k-means clustering identified clusters of countries whose PCPs perceived the same themes as most important. Post-hoc testing explored differences between these clusters.Twenty-five primary care centres in 20 European countries. Each centre was asked to recruit at least 50 participants.Primary care practitioners of each country.In all, 1,351 PCPs gave free-text answers. We identified eighteen themes organising the content of the responses. Based on the frequency of the themes, k-means clustering identified three groups of countries. There were significant differences between clusters regarding the importance of: access to tests (p = 0.010); access to specialists (p = 0.014), screening (p < 0.001); and finances, quotas & limits (p < 0.001).Our study identified three distinct clusters of European countries within which PCPs had similar views on the factors that would improve the timeliness of cancer diagnosis. Further work is needed to understand what it is about the clusters that have produced these patterns, allowing healthcare systems to share best practice and to reduce disparities.© 2023. BioMed Central Ltd., part of Springer Nature.