Culture-sensitive communication in pediatric oncology

Recruitment & Eligibility

Status: Recruiting

Sex: All

Target Recruitment: 80

Inclusion Criteria

Pillar A: Included are underage patients and their families in life-changing conversations who are being treated at the Clinic for Paediatric Oncology, Haematology and Clinical Immunology and who have at least one of the following characteristics. 1:
1. the language predominantly spoken in the family is not German.
2. at least one parent, grandparent or great-grandparent of the child was not born in Germany (4th generation).
The selection of cases should be as contrasting as possible in order to obtain a broad picture of different needs (on the part of doctors and families) and culturally conditioned aspects in A-E-P discussions. If possible, 10 families with different migration histories (with/without language barriers, grandchildren of guest workers, children/grandchildren of ethnic German immigrants, children from families who have recently fled, etc.) should be observed and interviewed in order to filter out commonalities and differences in needs and communication challenges in the context of the corresponding conversations.

Pillar B: The inclusion criteria for the intervention study are to be formulated on the basis of the results of the status-quo analysis in Pillar A and therefore cannot yet be named.

Exclusion Criteria

Adult patients. For participation in the study, the consent of both the underaged patient and both legal guardians is required. Consent should be available for adolescents aged 14 years and older. A missing consent of one of the described participants is an exclusion criterion for the participation in the study.
For the underage patients aged 8-13 years, consent is also sought, but it must be checked to what extent they can assess the significance and scope of the study. This must be decided on a case-by-case basis. For patients under 8 years of age, written consent is not required, but age-appropriate information and consent should be provided.
In addition, the responsible physicians will have to decide on a case-by-case basis whether organizational, personal or situational factors stand in the way of accompanying the consultation.

Study & Design

Study Type: interventional

Study Design: Not specified

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
The primary outcome is the difference in physician empathy as assessed by patient families between the physicians conducting the consultations with and without participation in the training. 2-4 weeks after the consultations, parents will be asked about physician empathy using the validated CARE scale.

Secondary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
As secondary outcome parameters, additional family-related scales, child-specific patient-related scales and the doctors' self-assessed intercultural competence will be collected via a questionnaire survey.