A new study showed that no matter how hard a doctor tries to be compassionate while delivering bad news to a patient, the patient perceives him or her as less compassionate.
Researchers at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, set out to see if using empathetic tone while delivering bad news to patients has an effect on their perception of the doctor's compassion.
The study involved 100 cancer patients with advanced cancer. They watched two videos with actors playing the role of doctors delivering good and bad news. The positive video showed a doctor talking to a patient of the possibility of future options. The negative video, on the other hand, was a doctor telling the patient that they have run out of options.
The participants measured each doctor's compassion on a scale of 0 to 50. The analysis showed that 57 percent of the patients felt that the doctor with good news is more compassionate than the doctor with bad news that was favored by only 22 percent.
"Our findings suggest that extra support is needed for patients and families and extra care is necessary from physicians when the news is less optimistic as physicians face a challenge to deliver honest prognostic information while still preserving hope," Eduardo Bruera, study leader of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, said in news release.
The findings of the study can be useful in developing techniques that doctors can use in delivering bad news without affecting the patients' perception of compassion.
"For example, would the patient perception be different with an in-person interaction, a longer discussion, a personal relationship with the physician, or at a different time in the patient's illness?" Teresa Gilewski, of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, wrote in a related commentary.
The study was published in the Feb. 26 issue of JAMA Oncology.
