Improving Patient-Provider Communication in Cancer Care

Improving shared decision making (SDM), patient-provider communication and incorporating patients' illness experiences and preferences into patient care are high priority health policy goals. However, this is difficult to accomplish without methods and systems that assist patients in sharing their illness experiences and clinicians in integrating this information into patient care. Choice is a computer-assisted, interactive communication and support system for cancer patients designed for this purpose. This interdisciplinary, international research collaboration will test effects of Choice in a pretest-post test clinical trial with 200 leukemia and lymphoma patients. We hypothesize that when patients use Choice for symptom and preference assessments and this information is provided to their clinicians to support consultations in routine practice, (1) patient-provider communication will be more patient-centered; (2) documented care will be more congruent with patients' reported symptoms and preferences; (3) patients will experience lower levels of anxiety and stress during consultations; and (4) they will be more satisfied with the consultation than the "usual care" control group. To better understand the mechanisms by which these effects occur, we will investigate relationships between communication style, documented patient care, anxiety and satisfaction; and explore time requirements, perceived usefulness and ease of use of Choice by patients and clinicians. Controlling for gender, age, diagnosis and type/stage of treatment, analyses of covariance and repeated measurement models will be primarily used for hypotheses testing, correlations and descriptive statistics to answer research questions. This study will contribute to new technologies to support SDM and patient-provider partnerships in health care that can significantly improve patient-provider communication, patient-centered care and physical, emotional and psycho-social well-being of cancer patients.