Empathy is critical in the care of breast cancer patients, and professionals who display empathy can help these patients achieve psychological well-being. Breast cancer is not only a physical health worry for sufferers, but it also has major emotional and psychological consequences.
According to a Rutgers study on how oncology doctors assist psychological well-being, clinicians who demonstrate more empathy promote higher psychological health among breast cancer patients.
“Our findings suggest that provider communication is a key component to reducing uncertainty, and thus providers play a key role in helping to facilitate psychological well-being,” said Liesl Broadbridge, a doctoral degree candidate at the Rutgers School of Communication and Information (SC&I) and the lead author of the study published in Patient Education and Counseling.
According to the findings of the researchers, discussing uncertainty with patients and being sympathetic to their fears is crucial to their healing and recovery.
“Our findings are directly applicable as targets for communication training modules for health care providers, because by continuing to advance skills in empathic communication, clinicians can enhance the health care experiences of their patients,” Broadbridge said in a statement.
Our findings suggest that provider communication is a key component to reducing uncertainty, and thus providers play a key role in helping to facilitate psychological well-being.
Liesl Broadbridge
In addition to Broadbridge, the authors of the study include SC&I Professor of Communication Kathryn Greene; SC&I Associate Professor of Communication Maria Venetis; SC&I doctoral degree student Lauren Lee; SC&I alumna Smita C. Banerjee, an associate attending behavioral scientist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center; Biren Saraiya, an associate professor of medicine at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School (RWJMS) and medical oncologist at Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey; and Katie A. Devine, an associate professor of pediatrics at RWJMS and chief of pediatric population science, outcomes, and disparities research at Rutgers Cancer Institute.
According to study, people with breast cancer are at a high risk of acquiring anxiety and depression symptoms as a result of their cancer diagnosis.
“As health communication researchers, we are interested in how health care providers can communicate in ways that help their patients cope with/manage their illness and support their psychological health,” Broadbridge said in a press release.
The researchers also looked into how the process of managing psychological well-being differed depending on whether the patients they questioned were actively undergoing cancer treatment or had finished their therapies.
She stated that present and former patients have various appointment kinds (for example, therapeutic decision-making for current patients and watchful waiting for former patients). As a result, people have had varying amounts of time to adjust to diagnoses and, potentially, varying connections with their providers (i.e., more or less time to form a relationship with the health care team).
“Although our findings were true for both current and former patients, the strength of the relationship between uncertainty and psychological adjustment was stronger for former patients than for current patients,” Broadbridge said in a press release. “This means that cancer care teams must continue to focus on uncertainty and issues regarding psychological health in cancer monitoring appointments and beyond the initial diagnosis/treatment phases of breast cancer survivorship.”
The researchers conducted online surveys to analyze current and former breast cancer patients’ opinions of their oncologists’ communication, their level of ambiguity regarding their diagnosis/treatment, and how they cope with the illness.
The Love Research Army, a research registry hosted by the Dr. Susan Love Foundation for Breast Cancer Research, a national advocacy organization for breast cancer patients, survivors, and at-risk family members, recruited 121 current and 187 former breast cancer patients to participate in the study.
The authors collaborated with this community group to expand the sample of participants beyond the local New Brunswick area and to contribute to broader discussions around cancer communication. The team also collaborated with the Rutgers Cancer Institute, with three of the study members (Broadbridge, Greene, and Devine) receiving $4,800 through a Cancer Survivorship and Outcomes Center Award to finish the experiment.
“The findings of this study highlight the importance of both eliciting and addressing breast cancer patients’ uncertainty throughout the cancer trajectory to facilitate psychological adjustment,” Broadbridge stated in a press release. “This is important because it underscores the role that clinicians play in helping patients manage both their physical and emotional/psychological health after breast cancer diagnosis.”
