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Patient-centered Care & Communication:
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Advancing Research Methodology for Measuring & Monitoring Patient-centered Communication in Cancer Care
The Outcomes Research Branch (ORB)-sponsored monograph Patient-Centered Communication
in Cancer Care: Promoting Healing and Reducing Suffering identifies six key
functions that characterize effective patient-centered communication processes in cancer
care:
- fostering clinician-patient relationships;
- exchanging information;
- responding to patients' emotions;
- managing uncertainty;
- making decisions; and
- enabling patient self-management (including facilitating navigation, improving coordination, and
supporting patient autonomy).
A critical step in facilitating the delivery of patient-centered communication (PCC) as
part of routine cancer care delivery is creating a measurement and monitoring system that
will allow for the ongoing assessment, tracking, and improvement of these six functions of
patient-centered communication. To build the foundation of such a system and to advance
research methodology in this area, the ORB is collaborating with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) on a
research project conducted within AHRQ's DEcIDE network.
The project is being conducted by RTI International and was launched in September 2007
to be completed over the course of 18 months. The project will focus on the diagnosis,
treatment, and post-treatment survivorship phases of the cancer care continuum and has
three specific objectives:
- Identify specific domains and sub-domains that characterize each of the six functions
of patient-centered communication;
- Identify candidate measures and describe data collection methods for longitudinal
assessment of the various domains and sub-domains identified for the six functions of
patient-centered communication; and
- Conduct a scientific symposium on research methods for measuring and monitoring
patient-centered communication in cancer care.
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