Friday, July 27, 2012
How to deliver a cancer diagnosis to patients
When I see patients in the office, I try to guess their occupations from their demeanor and mannerisms.
Salesmen are the easiest to ID. In general, they are gregarious males with manly handshakes. They laugh loudly and like to tell jokes. Teachers are more reserved and often give their narrative in a logical and chronological order, as would be expected. Another clue that the patient is an educator is that their appointments are usually in late afternoons. I have a solid record picking out the engineers and scientists. (For physician readers, I estimate that with regard to engineers, my sensitivity and specificity are 60% and 90% respectively.)
Engineers can be tough patients for gastroenterologists to treat. They operate in a computational universe, where numbers add up and problems have concrete solutions. Doctors, particularly gastroenterologists, function in an entirely different milieu. Our world is nebulous. Engineers see mathematical truths, while GI physicians see fog. When they see us with chronic nausea and abdominal pain, they are frustrated when we cannot provide them with a satisfying diagnosis.
I recall an engineer I saw some time ago. He was neatly attired and related his ominous symptoms in an intellectual manner, as if he were giving traffic directions. He was having trouble swallowing his food and was steadily losing weight, a presentation that generates the highest level of physician concern.
I scheduled him for a scope examination of the esophagus, and found the expected cancer. Afterward, he was seated with his wife as they awaited the news of my findings.
These minutes when we physicians know the bad news, and the patient doesn't, are ponderous. We wish we could hold on to the secret and spare patients from the knowledge that will change their lives so brutally and irrevocably. Subconsciously, we stall. During those minutes, hours or sometimes days, physicians are in a different dimension, a medical twilight zone. Once we relate the news, however, we are hurled back to earth. Once the patient knows, then we are enveloped by an aura of cold reality.
How should physicians give bad news to our patients? Should we be blunt? Do we front load the heavy news or lead to it after several introductory sentences? Should we use euphemisms like 'growth,' when cancer is the right word? Should we spin the information with hope and optimism, even if the medical facts contradict this assessment? Do we tend to sugarcoat for our own benefit as well as to soothe the patient? Should serious medical news ever be delivered on the telephone? How do we respond if the patient asks, "Am I going to die?"
There is no standard strategy of how to do this right. In addition, patients are distinct human beings and must be approached individually. See First, a blog that emphasizes the importance of communication between physicians and patients, writes that false hope for patients may be the wrong prescription. Medrants, an academic physician and thoughtful blogger, speaks for all physicians when he writes, "Breaking bad news may be the most difficult and important part of our profession."
I have spent 4 years in medical school, 3 years in an internal medicine residency followed by 2 years of fellowship training in gastroenterology. During those 9 years, I don't recall a single lecture on how to deliver bad news to patients. Yet, I remember memorizing biochemical equations, the names of minute nerves and muscles, the function of microscopic components of cells, hundreds of medications and the natural history of arcane diseases that I have never seen in my career.
The astute medical interns and residents I admired were those who could spew off the dozen or so medical explanations for an elevated calcium blood level. I wonder if medical training, at least in my day, had proper priorities for training physicians. Doc Gurley, a physician and folksy and irreverent blogger, recalls a single lecture she heard as a medical student on how to deliver bad news to patients. It impacts her practice to this day, two decades later.
Delivering bad news is a very difficult and unavoidable responsibility of a physician. Do I do it well? I think so, but I'm not really sure. I gave the news to my patient and his wife after I had made arrangements for him to see the necessary consultants in the coming days. I think that patients' stress in these situations is eased when there is a plan that we physicians put in place. He listened without demonstrating emotion, and thanked me for my time. He then left with his worried wife. The news was still in his analytical left brain, where he stores his facts, figures and formulae. What happens when it crosses the Rubicon over to the other side?
This post by Michael Kirsch, MD, FACP, appeared at MD Whistleblower. Dr. Kirsch is a full time practicing physician and writer who addresses the joys and challenges of medical practice, including controversies in the doctor-patient relationship, medical ethics and measuring medical quality. When he's not writing, he's performing colonoscopies.
Labels: cancer, diagnosis, guest post, MD Whistleblower, Michael Kirsch, patient communication, professionalism
posted by Michael Kirsch, MD at
11:00 AM
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Blog log
Members of the American College of Physicians contribute posts from their own sites to ACP Internistand ACP Hospitalist. Contributors include:
Albert Fuchs,
MD
Albert Fuchs, MD, FACP, graduated from the
University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine, where he
also did his internal medicine training. Certified by the American
Board of Internal Medicine, Dr. Fuchs spent three years as a
full-time faculty member at UCLA School of Medicine before opening
his private practice in Beverly Hills in 2000.
And Thus, It Begins
Amanda Xi, ACP Medical
Student Member, is a first-year medical student at the OUWB School
of Medicine, charter class of 2015, in Rochester, Mich., from which
she which chronicles her journey through medical training from day
1 of medical school.
Zackary Berger
Zackary Berger, MD, ACP Member, is a primary care doctor and
general internist in the Division of General Internal Medicine at
Johns Hopkins. His research interests include doctor-patient
communication, bioethics, and systematic reviews.
Controversies in Hospital
Infection Prevention
Run by three ACP
Fellows, this blog ponders vexing issues in infection prevention
and control, inside and outside the hospital. Daniel J Diekema, MD,
FACP, practices infectious diseases, clinical microbiology, and
hospital epidemiology in Iowa City, Iowa, splitting time between
seeing patients with infectious diseases, diagnosing infections in
the microbiology laboratory, and trying to prevent infections in
the hospital. Michael B. Edmond, MD, FACP, is a hospital
epidemiologist in Richmond, Va., with a focus on understanding why
infections occur in the hospital and ways to prevent these
infections, and sees patients in the inpatient and outpatient
settings. Eli N. Perencevich, MD, ACP Member, is an infectious
disease physician and epidemiologist in Iowa City, Iowa, who
studies methods to halt the spread of resistant bacteria in our
hospitals (including novel ways to get everyone to wash their
hands).
db's Medical Rants
Robert M. Centor, MD, FACP, contributes short essays contemplating
medicine and the health care system.
DrDialogue
Juliet K. Mavromatis, MD, FACP, provides a conversation about
health topics for patients and health professionals.
Dr. Mintz' Blog
Matthew Mintz, MD, FACP, has practiced internal medicine for more
than a decade and is an Associate Professor of Medicine at an
academic medical center on the East Coast. His time is split
between teaching medical students and residents, and caring for
patients.
Everything
Health
Toni Brayer, MD, FACP, blogs about the rapid changes in science,
medicine, health and healing in the 21st century.
FutureDocs
Vineet Arora, MD, FACP, is Associate Program Director for the
Internal Medicine Residency and Assistant Dean of Scholarship &
Discovery at the Pritzker School of Medicine for the University of
Chicago. Her education and research focus is on resident duty
hours, patient handoffs, medical professionalism, and quality of
hospital care. She is also an academic hospitalist.
Glass Hospital
John H. Schumann, MD, FACP, provides transparency on the workings
of medical practice and the complexities of hospital care,
illuminates the emotional and cognitive aspects of caregiving and
decision-making from the perspective of an active primary care
physician, and offers behind-the-scenes portraits of hospital
sanctums and the people who inhabit them.
Gut Check
Ryan Madanick, MD, ACP Member, is a gastroenterologist at the
University of North Carolina School of Medicine, and the Program
Director for the GI & Hepatology Fellowship Program. He
specializes in diseases of the esophagus, with a strong interest in
the diagnosis and treatment of patients who have
difficult-to-manage esophageal problems such as refractory GERD,
heartburn, and chest pain.
I'm dok
Mike Aref, MD, PhD, FACP, is an academic hospitalist with an
interest in basic and clinical science and education, with
interests in noninvasive monitoring and diagnostic testing using
novel bedside imaging modalities, diagnostic reasoning, medical
informatics, new medical education modalities, pre-code/code
management, palliative care, patient-physician communication,
quality improvement, and quantitative biomedical imaging.
Informatics
Professor
William Hersh, MD, FACP, Professor and Chair, Department of Medical
Informatics & Clinical Epidemiology, Oregon Health &
Science University, posts his thoughts on various topics related to
biomedical and health informatics.
David Katz, MD
David L. Katz, MD, MPH, FACP, is an internationally renowned
authority on nutrition, weight management, and the prevention of
chronic disease, and an internationally recognized leader in
integrative medicine and patient-centered care.
Just Oncology
Richard Just, MD, ACP Member, has 36 years in clinical practice of
hematology and medical oncology. His blog is a joint publication
with Gregg Masters, MPH.
KevinMD
Kevin Pho, MD, ACP Member, offers one of the Web's definitive sites
for influential health commentary.
MD
Whistleblower
Michael Kirsch, MD, FACP, addresses the joys and challenges of
medical practice, including controversies in the doctor-patient
relationship, medical ethics and measuring medical quality. When
he's not writing, he's performing colonoscopies.
Medical Lessons
Elaine Schattner, MD, FACP, shares her ideas on education, ethics
in medicine, health care news and culture. Her views on medicine
are informed by her past experiences in caring for patients, as a
researcher in cancer immunology, and as a patient who's had breast
cancer.
Mired in MedEd
Alexander M.
Djuricich, MD, FACP, is the Associate Dean for Continuing Medical
Education (CME), and a Program Director in Medicine-Pediatrics at
the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, where he
blogs about medical education.
More Musings
Rob Lamberts, MD, ACP Member, a med-peds and general practice
internist, returns with "volume 2" of his personal musings about
medicine, life, armadillos and Sasquatch at More Musings (of a
Distractible Kind).
Prescriptions
David M. Sack, MD, FACP, practices general gastroenterology at a
small community hospital in Connecticut. His blog is a series of
musings on medicine, medical care, the health care system and
medical ethics, in no particular order.
Reflections of a Grady
Doctor
Kimberly Manning, MD, FACP, reflects on the personal side of being
a doctor in a community hospital in Atlanta.
The Blog of Paul Sufka
Paul Sufka,
MD, ACP Member, is a board certified rheumatologist in St. Paul,
Minn. He was a chief resident in internal medicine with the
University of Minnesota and then completed his fellowship training
in rheumatology in June 2011 at the University of Minnesota
Department of Rheumatology. His interests include the use of
technology in medicine.
Technology in (Medical)
Education
Neil Mehta, MBBS, MS, FACP, is interested in use of technology in
education, social media and networking, practice management and
evidence-based medicine tools, personal information and knowledge
management.
Peter A. Lipson,
MD
Peter A. Lipson, MD, ACP Member, is a practicing internist and
teaching physician in Southeast Michigan. The blog, which has been
around in various forms since 2007, offers musings on the
intersection of science, medicine, and culture.
Why is American Health Care So Expensive?
Janice
Boughton, MD, FACP, practiced internal medicine for 20 years before
adopting a career in hospital and primary care medicine as a locum
tenens physician. She lives in Idaho when not traveling.
World's Best Site
Daniel Ginsberg, MD,
FACP, is an internal medicine physician who has avidly applied
computers to medicine since 1986, when he first wrote medically
oriented computer programs. He is in practice in Tacoma,
Washington.
Other blogs of note:
American Journal of
Medicine
Also known as the Green Journal, the American Journal of Medicine
publishes original clinical articles of interest to physicians in
internal medicine and its subspecialities, both in academia and
community-based practice.
Clinical
Correlations
A collaborative medical blog started by Neil Shapiro, MD, ACP
Member, associate program director at New York University Medical
Center's internal medicine residency program. Faculty, residents
and students contribute case studies, mystery quizzes, news,
commentary and more.
Interact MD
Michael Benjamin, MD, ACP member, doesn't accept industry money so
he can create an independent, clinician-reviewed space on the
Internet for physicians to report and comment on the medical news
of the day.
PLoS Blog
The Public Library of Science's open access materials include a
blog.
White Coat
Rants
One of the most popular anonymous blogs written by an emergency
room physician.
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