Abstract
Providers oftentimes need to have difficult conversations with patients facing a poor prognosis. Research indicates that providers generally feel ill prepared for these conversations and that bad conversations may lead to more anxiety for patients. Communication skills development training programs have shown improvement in providers’ skills. Our cancer center embarked on skills development training to help providers improve their skills and comfort in having serious illness conversations. During our phased approach, about 500 physicians and advanced practice providers in the Division of Oncology were trained for over a year. Their level of comfort with serious illness conversations was measured before and after the training by using both quantitative and qualitative methods. We found that mean and median comfort scores increased from pre-training to post-training. The findings suggest that the improved comfort and confidence observed among providers who undergo communications skills training can lead to better provider-patient communication, more patient-centered care, and improved patient satisfaction.
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The data utilized in this study are not available for public access.
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by E. Adaji, M. Johnson, and N. Nortje. The first draft of the manuscript was written by E. Adaji, M. Johnson, and N. Nortje, and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Since this was not a research study, but a quality improvement project, completion of the evaluation forms was voluntary with no identifiers requested/stored.
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Adaji, E., Johnson, M., George, M.C. et al. Enhancing Oncologists’ Comfort with Serious Illness Conversations: The Impact of Serious Illness Conversation Guide (SICG) Training. J Canc Educ (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13187-024-02441-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13187-024-02441-w