Oncology Care Provider (OCP) Training in Empathic Communication Skills to Reduce Lung Cancer Stigma

ABSTRACT Background Despite the clinical importance of assessing smoking history and advising patients who smoke to quit, lung cancer patients often experience feelings of blame and stigma during clinical encounters with their oncology care providers (OCPs). Promoting empathic communication during these encounters may help reduce patients’ experience of stigma and improve related clinical outcomes. This paper presents the first-reported OCP- and patient-reported data on the usefulness of an OCP-targeted empathic communication skills (ECS) training to reduce lung cancer stigma and improve communication. Research Question What is the impact of the ECS intervention on OCPs’ communication skills uptake, and patient-reported outcomes (lung cancer stigma, satisfaction with communication, and perceived OCP empathy)? Methods Participants were 30 multidisciplinary OCPs treating patients with lung cancer, who participated in a 2.25 hour ECS training. Standardized Patient Assessments (SPAs) were conducted before- and after-training to assess ECS uptake among OCPs. In addition, out of planned 180 patients who currently or formerly smoked (6 unique patients per OCP; 3 pre-training, 3 post-training), 175 patients (89 pre-training; 86 post-training) completed post-OCP visit surveys eliciting feedback on the quality of their interaction with their OCP. Results OCPs demonstrated an overall increase in use of empathic communication skills [t(28)=-2.37, p Interpretation Empathy-based, stigma-reducing communication may lead to improved assessments of tobacco use and smoking cessation for patients with smoking-related cancers. These findings support the dissemination and further testing of a new ECS model for training OCPs in best practices for assessment of smoking history and engagement of patients who currently smoke in tobacco treatment delivery.