Oncologists’ Perceptions of Strategies for Discussing the Cost of Care with Cancer Patients and the Meaning of Those Conversations

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2 Scopus citations

Abstract

To better understand what makes cost-of-care communication between oncologists and cancer patients more or less successful, we conducted in-depth interviews with 32 oncologists (22 male, 10 female) who were board-certified in medical, surgical, or radiation oncology. Through qualitative descriptive analysis by four coders, we found that oncologists used six broad strategies to discuss cost with patients: open discussion, avoidance, reassurance, warning, outsourcing, and educating. We also found that oncologists invoked certain meanings of cost conversations: cost conversations as holistic care, coercion, a matter of timing, risking patient suspicions, advocacy, unwanted distraction, transparency, bad news delivery, problem-solving, pointless, informed decision making, or irrelevant. These meanings appeared to be linked to oncologists enacting certain strategies (e.g., oncologists who invoked cost conversations as holistic care tended to enact open discussion, those who saw cost conversations as risky tended to use avoidance). Theoretically, our results suggest that the invoked meaning of a difficult conversation may be a key explanatory mechanism for differentiating high-quality from low-quality communication in cost conversations. Practically, our findings suggest that oncologists should consider how well the invoked meaning of the cost conversation is serving their own and their patients’ goals.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1343-1357
Number of pages15
JournalHealth Communication
Volume39
Issue number7
DOIs
StatePublished - 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Health(social science)
  • Communication

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