OBJECTIVE: Effective communication between cancer patients and providers is critical for addressing psychological distress, reducing uncertainty, and promoting patient well-being. This is particularly relevant during medical appointments that may elicit uncertainty, such as surgical consultations for newly diagnosed women with breast cancer. This study aimed to evaluate how pre-appointment anxiety and illness uncertainty affect patient-provider communication in breast cancer surgical consultations and subsequent post-appointment well-being. Breast cancer patient anxiety has been studied as an outcome of provider communication, though less is known about the extent to which preexisting anxiety or uncertainty act as antecedents to effective patient-provider communication.
METHODS: This study analyzed videorecorded breast cancer surgical consultations (N = 51) and corresponding patient surveys to understand how pre-appointment anxiety influences pre-appointment patient uncertainty, patient-provider communication during the appointment, and subsequent post-appointment uncertainty.
RESULTS: The proposed model achieved good fit to the data such that more pre-appointment anxiety was associated with more pre-appointment uncertainty, more pre-appointment anxiety was associated with more empathic opportunities per minute, and more empathic opportunities were associated with less post-appointment uncertainty.
CONCLUSIONS: Results indicate breast cancer patients with anxiety pre-appointment are at-risk for more illness uncertainty and are more likely to explicitly provide empathic opportunities. This supports the need for added attention to empathic opportunities to not only address patients emotionally but to also assess whether a patient may be at higher risk of having preexisting anxiety.

OBJECTIVE: Educational approaches for training physicians in clinical communications vary, and whether physicians apply the communication skills they learn or find them useful in the clinic is not well known. The aim of this study was to determine how first-year residents who received explicit instruction in 7 communication strategies would apply them in a simulation exercise and in clinical practice.
METHODS: First-year Internal Medicine residents at an urban teaching hospital received instruction in 7 systematic communication strategies: Ask-Tell-Ask, Teach-back, open-ended questioning, NURSE, open body language, pausing, and plain language. Residents were evaluated on their use of specific communication behaviors associated with the 7 strategies during a simulation exercise of disclosing a medical error to a standardized patient. Control group residents who did the simulation before attending the training program and training group residents who did the simulation after the training were compared. Residents were queried 6 months after the training program on their use of communication strategies during clinical practice.
RESULTS: A total of 27 residents participated (n = 13 control group; n = 14 training group). The training group performed behaviors for \"establishing patient understanding\" significantly more often than the control group. Both groups used non-verbal communication and behaviors for addressing patient emotions at similar levels. Of the 24 residents who responded to the 6-month follow-up questionnaire, 24 (100%) reported using Ask-Tell-Ask, open-ended questioning, and Teach-back, and 22 (92%) reported using NURSE statements and non-verbal communication. Most respondents reported using the strategies in clinical practice often or very often (79%) and found the strategies useful or very useful (96%).
CONCLUSIONS: Providing explicit instruction in systematic communication strategies, particularly those focused on establishing patient understanding, may be an efficient approach for helping early career physicians develop effective communication skills that can be readily implemented during clinical training and practice.

Objective: To evaluate the extent to which personal well-being may be associated with empathy, while controlling for potential confounders. Settings/Location: Residency programs throughout the United States. Subjects: A total of 407 medical residents from residencies including general medicine, surgery, specialized and diagnostic medicine participated in this study. Outcome Measures: Well-being was measured using the modified existential well-being subscale of the spiritual well-being scale. Empathy was measured using the Jefferson Scale of Empathy. Results: Well-being was found to be positively correlated with empathy when adjusted for possible confounders (p < 0.001). In addition to well-being, other factors noted to be statistically significant contributors to higher empathy scores while controlling for the others included age, gender, year in residency, specialty, and work-hours (p < 0.05 for each). After controlling for these factors, a resident\'s year in residency was not found to be a statistically significant contributor to empathy score. Conclusions: In this study, well-being was associated with empathy in medical and surgical residents. Empathy is a fundamental component of physician competency, and its development is an essential aspect of medical training. These findings suggest that efforts to increase well-being may promote empathy among medical residents.

OBJECTIVE: Clinical work-integrating care (CWIC) refers to paying attention to work participation in a clinical setting. Working patients may benefit from CWIC. The purpose of this study is to explore the extent and nature to which medical specialists provide CWIC and what policies and guidelines oblige or recommend specialists to do.
METHODS: A scoping review was conducted. The databases MEDLINE, EMBASE, Psychinfo, CINAHL, and Web of Science were searched for studies on the extent and nature of CWIC and supplemented by gray literature on policies and guidelines. Six main categories were defined a priori. Applying a meta-aggregative approach, subcategories were subsequently defined using qualitative data. Next, quantitative findings were integrated into these subcategories. A separate narrative of policies and guidelines using the same main categories was constructed.
RESULTS: In total, 70 studies and 55 gray literature documents were included. The main findings per category were as follows: (1) collecting data on the occupation of patients varied widely; (2) most specialists did not routinely discuss work, but recent studies showed an increasing tendency to do so, which corresponds to recent policies and guidelines; (3) work-related advice ranged from general advice to patient-physician collaboration about work-related decisions; (4) CWIC was driven by legislation in many countries; (5) specialists sometimes collaborated in multidisciplinary teams to provide CWIC; and (6) medical guidelines regarding CWIC were generally not available.
CONCLUSIONS: Medical specialists provide a wide variety of CWIC ranging from assessing a patient\'s occupation to extensive collaboration with patients and other professionals to support work participation. Lack of medical guidelines could explain the variety of these practices.

Among the myriad voices advocating diverging ideas of what general practice ought to be, none seem to adequately capture its ethical core. There is a paucity of attempts to integrate moral theory with empirical accounts of the embodied moral knowledge of GPs in order to inform a general normative theory of good general practice. In this article, we present an empirically grounded model of the professional morality of GPs, and discuss its implications in relation to ethical theories to see whether it might be sustainable as a general practice ethic.
We observed and interviewed sixteen GPs and GP residents working in health care centres in four Swedish regions between 2015-2017. In keeping with Straussian Grounded Theory, sampling was initially purposeful and later theoretically guided, and data generation, analysis and theoretical integration proceeded in parallel. The focal concept of this article was refined through multidimensional property supplementation.
The voice of the profession is one of four concepts in our emerging theory that attempt to capture various motives that affect GPs\' everyday moral decisionmaking. It reflects how GPs appreciate the situation by passing three professional-moral judgments: Shall I see what is before me, or take a bird\'s-eye view? Shall I intervene, or stay my hand? And do I need to speak up, or should I rather shut up? By thus framing the problem, the GP narrows down the range of considerations, allowing them to focus on its morally most pertinent aspects. This process is best understood as a way of heeding Løgstrup\'s ethical demand. Refracted through the lens of the GP\'s professional understanding of life, the ethical demand gives rise to specific moral imperatives that may stand in opposition to the express wishes of the other, social norms, or the GP\'s self-interest.
The voice of the profession makes sense of how GPs frame problematic situations in moral terms. It is coherent enough to be sustainable as a general practice ethic, and might be helpful in explaining why ethical decisions that GPs intuitively understand as justified, but for which social support is lacking, can nevertheless be legitimate.

This review aimed to synthesize evidence on the effectiveness of shared decision-making (SDM) tools for cancer screening and explored the preferences of vulnerable people and clinicians regarding the specific characteristics of the SDM tools. A mixed-method convergent segregated approach was employed, which involved an independent synthesis of quantitative and qualitative data. Articles were systematically selected and screened, resulting in the inclusion and critical appraisal of 55 studies. Results from the meta-analysis revealed that SDM tools were more effective for improving knowledge, reducing decisional conflict, and increasing screening intentions among vulnerable populations compared to non-vulnerable populations. Subgroup analyses showed minimal heterogeneity for decisional conflict outcomes measured over a six-month period. Insights from the qualitative findings revealed the complexities of clinicians\' and vulnerable populations\' preferences for an SDM tool in cancer screening. Vulnerable populations highly preferred SDM tools with relevant information, culturally tailored content, and appropriate communication strategies. Clinicians, on the other hand, highly preferred tools that can be easily integrated into their medical systems for efficient use and can effectively guide their practice for cancer screening while considering patients\' values. Considering the complexities of patients\' and clinicians\' preferences in SDM tool characteristics, fostering collaboration between patients and clinicians during the creation of an SDM tool for cancer screening is essential. This collaboration may ensure effective communication about the specific tool characteristics that best support the needs and preferences of both parties.

BACKGROUND: To work effectively, doctors need to look after themselves. They often delay seeking medical care for a range of reasons. Once they do, there is evidence that the doctors treating them (\'treating doctors\') can struggle to provide optimal care.
OBJECTIVE: To examine existing literature on what is currently known about experiences for treating doctors, in particular GPs, when their patient is also a doctor.
METHODS: A scoping review of articles written in English.
METHODS: Using the JBI methodological framework for scoping reviews, five databases (MEDLINE, PsycINFO, CINAHL [Cumulative Index to Nursing & Allied Health], Google Scholar, and Scopus) were searched from the database start date until 31 December 2022. Qualitative and quantitative studies reporting the treating doctor\'s experience, guidelines for treating doctors, expert opinion articles, and editorials were included. Grey literature was considered, searching the first 10 pages of two Google searches.
RESULTS: Forty-eight articles from eight countries met inclusion criteria, of which 12 were research studies. The main areas of focus were as follows: affective responses, which included anxiety about being criticised, concern about upsetting the doctor-patient, and discomfort regarding the acknowledgement that doctors get sick; relational factors, which included boundary issues, over-identifying with the doctor-patient, treating them as a colleague rather than a patient, and role ambiguity; confidentiality, which incorporated both affective and relational aspects; and influence of medical culture and socialisation on dynamics between treating doctor and doctor-patient. These findings have been distilled into a list of key suggestions for the treating doctor.
CONCLUSIONS: Doctors can find treating doctor-patients anxiety-provoking and challenging. The sources of this discomfort are multifaceted, and more empirical research is needed to better understand and address the complex relationship between treating doctor and doctor-patient.

BACKGROUND: Continuity of care (COC) for older adults has been associated with lower use of healthcare services, decreased risk of hospitalisation, and lower mortality. However, research on COC in older adults is limited by short time periods and small sample sizes. Long-term COC can only develop if the patient stays with the general practice for ≥10 years. Therefore, research that focuses on long duration and broader populations is needed.
OBJECTIVE: To measure the extent of longitudinal site-level COC in general practice and listing duration of the patient-general practice relation for all older Danish citizens.
METHODS: Retrospective cohort study of all patients aged ≥65 years on 31 December 2021 listed with a Danish general practice (N = 1 144 941 persons).
METHODS: Individual-level register data were used on start and end dates for listing with a general practice to analyse site-level COC by number of changes and listing duration of the patient-general practice relation from January 2007-December 2021.
RESULTS: During the 15 years, 39.3% of older adults did not change general practice. Among the remaining 60.7%, who experienced discontinuity of care, 34.0% changed once, 16.3% changed twice, and 6.3% changed three times. Overall, <5% changed general practice >3 times. The duration of the patient-general practice relations were on average 9.5 years. Overall, 27.5% lasted 0-4 years, 33.7% lasted 5-9 years, and 38.8% lasted ≥10 years.
CONCLUSIONS: Danish general practice provides high levels of site-level COC for their older patients. On average, patients aged ≥65 years changed general practice once and had a patient-general practice relation length of 9.5 years.

Aim: Survival of patients with Hodgkin\'s lymphoma is lower in in low- and middle-income countries, but factors leading to these outcomes are poorly understood. The objective of this study was to identify predictive factors associated with overall survival among cancer patients undergoing therapy in seven low- and middle-income countries. Materials & methods: A multicenter cohort was conducted in Egypt, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Philippines, Thailand and Ukraine. Results. A total of 460 patients were included. Phone-based support during patient follow-up and number of patients seen by the physician provided a positive impact, while the number of adverse events remains a predictor of death and physician decision to stop treatment. Conclusion: Furthers research on the potential benefit of phone-based programs to support patients with chronic diseases treatments should be explored in less developed countries.

Patient experience feedback is key in patient centred health systems, but empirical evidence of general practitioner (GP) interest in it is sparse. We aimed to: (i) quantitatively estimate the level of GP interest for feedback reports on patient experience; (ii) explore determinants of such interest; and (iii) examine potential association between a priori interest and patient experience.
The patient experience survey included maximum 300 randomly selected patients for each of 50 randomly selected GPs (response rate 41.4%, n = 5,623). GPs were sent a postal letter offering feedback reports and were grouped according to their replies: (i) interested in the report; (ii) not interested. Associations between interest and GP variables were assessed with Chi-square tests and multivariate logistic regression, while associations between interest and scores for 5 patient experiences scales were assessed with multilevel regression models.
About half (n = 21; 45.7%) of the GPs showed interest in the report by asking to receive the report. The only GP variable associated with a priori interest was being a specialist in general practice (58.6% vs. 23.5% for those without) (P = 0.021). Interest was significantly associated with the practice patient experience scale (4.1 higher score compared with those not interested, P = 0.048). Interest in the report had small and nonsignificant associations with the remaining patient experience scales.
Almost half of the GPs, and almost 3 in 5 of specialists in general practice, were interested in receiving a GP-specific feedback report on patient experiences. Interest in the report was generally not related to patient experience scores.