Clinical trial NCT02969031: Improving Communication Between Cancer Patients & Oncologists
Official title: Improving Communication Between Cancer Patients and Oncologists Using Patient Feedback on Actual Conversations and the ABIM Maintenance of Certification Program
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: COMPLETED
Phase: NA
Conditions: Cancer
Keywords: communication
Lead sponsor: Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Sponsor class: OTHER
Collaborators: name: American Board of Internal Medicine
name: Duke University
name: Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute
First posted: 2016-11-21
Enrollment: 148
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 18
Standard ages: ADULT
OLDER_ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: yes
Allocation: RANDOMIZED
Intervention model: PARALLEL
Primary purpose: HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH

Brief summary: The overarching goal of this project is to improve communication between oncologists and their patients by ensuring that the patient's voice is heard in the medical encounter. Thus, the hope is to improve the experience for patients living with cancer. The investigators seek to accomplish this goal by providing oncologists communication skills training that includes feedback on their own audio-recorded conversations. The feedback will come from two sources: 1) Professional research assistant coders who will identify objective learning opportunities based on specific coding criteria and 2) Trained patient reviewers who will listen to the recordings and offer their own, subjective feedback at key moments in the encounters.

Detailed description: The primary objective of the Enhanced SCOPE program is to teach oncologists to recognize the role of emotion in discussions with cancer patients, to increase their self-efficacy for addressing affective concerns, and to provide them with the skills for doing so. Oncologists are most likely to achieve competency in these areas when, in addition to didactic training, they can also observe their own conversation and receive feedback on their interactions. The Enhanced SCOPE program itself is an online web application that can be viewed from any computer with internet connectivity. The investigators will be conducting a randomized controlled trial to test the impact on patient satisfaction and medical visit quality of a communication skills teaching intervention for oncologists that is integrated into the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) Maintenance Of Certification (MOC) process. Oncologists who choose to enroll in this pilot Practice Improvement Module (PIM) will complete a baseline questionnaire, send out satisfaction surveys to a sample of their patients, and then audio record (using a smartphone application) eight clinic visits with eight different patients. Oncologists who are assigned to the control arm will receive the results of the patient surveys and be asked to conduct a quality improvement activity that responds to the feedback (the current "standard" communication PIM). Oncologists assigned to the intervention arm will receive the survey feedback as well as the enhanced SCOPE program that provides feedback on their audio-recorded encounters via a web based interactive program. The feedback will come from two sources: 1) Professional research assistant coders who will identify objective learning opportunities based on specific coding criteria (e.g., empathic opportunities, use of open-ended questions) and 2) Trained patient reviewers who will listen to the recordings and offer their own, subjective feedback at key moments in the encounters. These patient reviewers will be drawn from our stakeholder partners and are active patient advocates. They will be treated as members of the research team, paid for the reviews, and are not patients of the study physicians. One month after reviewing their feedback, oncologists in both arms will audio record another eight encounters and send out satisfaction surveys to a new sample of patients.

Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* All American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) Board certified oncologists practicing in the U. S. and enrolled in Maintenance of Certification.
* Have a study-compatible smart phone.
* Eligible patients will have metastatic cancer.
* At least 18 years of age.
* Speak and read English.
* Receive oncology care from an enrolled oncologist.

Exclusion Criteria:

* Dana Farber Cancer Institute oncologists and oncologists who do not speak English to their patients.
* Patients who do not speak English.

Primary outcomes:
measure: Provider to Patient Communication Score
timeFrame: 6 months
Secondary outcomes:
measure: Empathic Response to Patient Expressions of Negative Emotions
timeFrame: 6 months
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Boston
country: United States
facility: Dana Farber Cancer Institute
state: Massachusetts
Study officials:
affiliation: Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
name: James A. Tulsky, MD
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
References: