Patient-centered Communication Research
Several recent reports, including NCI's
Strategic Plan for Leading the Nation and the NCI-designated cancer center directors'
report Accelerating
Successes Against Cancer, have recognized
the salience of patient-clinician communication in optimizing cancer patients' and
survivors' health outcomes.
To improve the quality of cancer care, NCI's strategic plan calls for research that
would assess the delivery and impact of patient-centered communication across the cancer
continuum. The plan encourages the development of innovative measurement approaches and
study designs to help monitor and track the success of communication efforts over the
course of the patient, family, and healthcare provider experience.
The Outcomes Research Branch (ORB), in collaboration with the Health
Communication and Informatics Research Branch (HCIRB), has identified the "assessment,
monitoring, and improvement of the delivery of patient-centered communication between
patients/family and the health care delivery team(s) across the cancer care continuum" as
a key research priority. Special emphasis is on developing innovative measurement, data
collection, and analytic approaches. These approaches can facilitate the longitudinal assessment of
patient-centered communication processes as patients and their family members interact
with multiple physicians, nurses, and other healthcare providers during their journey
through different phases of the cancer care continuum. ORB is also particularly
interested in facilitating the understanding of the mechanisms by which patient-centered
communication processes are likely to affect patient/survivor health outcomes.
ORB has supported the following research projects in the area of patient-centered
communication.
|
