Improving Communication Between Cancer Patients & Oncologists

Improving Communication Between Cancer Patients and Oncologists Using Patient Feedback on Actual Conversations and the ABIM Maintenance of Certification Program

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.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Cancer
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: Enhanced SCOPE training; Behavioral: Standard Communication training

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.

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 148
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• United States
  • Massachusetts
    • Boston, Massachusetts, United States, 02115
      • Dana Farber Cancer Institute

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 18 years and older (ADULT, OLDER_ADULT)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes
• Genders Eligible for Study: All

Description

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.

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH
• Allocation: RANDOMIZED
• Interventional Model: PARALLEL
• Masking: NONE

Number of Arms

2

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Enhanced SCOPE training; Complete a baseline questionnaire, administer satisfaction surveys anonymously to a sample of their patients, audio record (using a smartphone application) eight clinic visits with eight different patients. Receive survey feedback as well as the enhanced SCOPE program that provides feedback on their audio-recorded encounters via a web-based interactive program.	Behavioral: Enhanced SCOPE training; Intervention is integrated into the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) Maintenance Of Certification (MOC) process.
Active Comparator: Standard Communication training; Complete a baseline questionnaire, administer satisfaction surveys anonymously to a sample of their patients. Receive the results of the patient surveys and be asked to conduct a quality improvement activity of their own design that responds to the feedback (the current "standard" communication PIM).	Behavioral: Standard Communication training; Standard Communication training

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Provider to Patient Communication Score	The score measures the construct of patient's perception of attentive response by the medical oncologist during recalled office encounters over 12 months. Patients completed the Clinician Group Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CG-CAHPS©) Version 1.0 questionnaire via computer or phone Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system.The Provider to Patient Communication Score:(1) Provider explained things in a way that was easy to understand (2) Provider listened carefully to patient (3) Provider showed respect for what patient had to say (4) Provider spent enough time with patient. Coded as 1 (Yes, definitely), 2 (Yes, somewhat), 3 (No), or 4 (I prefer not to answer).Obtained aggregate score ((1) to (3) above), calculated avg. of the scores to each question. Avgs. modeled with linear mixed-effect model. Analyzed data in both cases where a) missing responses are dropped from data and b) missing responses are kept in dataset. Lower score indicates more desirable outcome.	6 months

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Empathic Response to Patient Expressions of Negative Emotions	What does the outcome measure? The outcome measures the construct of a physician's skill at providing appropriate empathic responses to patient's expressions of emotional concerns. The measure is the ratio of the number of empathic responses to the total empathic opportunities that occur during a provider-patient encounter. How is the outcome measured? The provider-patient encounters are audio recorded. Trained listeners review, score and code the physician responses from the audio-recorded conversations. This code indicates an empathic opportunity. Behaviors that represent appropriate empathic responses are also coded.	6 months

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
• Collaborators: Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute; Duke University; American Board of Internal Medicine

Publications and helpful links

Helpful Links

• Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) Research Award Listing
• Dana Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI), Department of Psychosocial Oncology and Palliative Care (POPC) Listing of Current Research and PCORI Award
• Vital Talk is a non-profit whose mission is to nurture healthier connections between patients and clinicians. We are using Vital Talk intellectual property (e.g., REMAP) for the intervention

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): February 14, 2017
• Primary Completion (Actual): August 31, 2018
• Study Completion (Actual): August 31, 2018

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: November 16, 2016
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: November 17, 2016
• First Posted (Estimate): November 21, 2016

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): January 3, 2020
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: December 16, 2019
• Last Verified: December 1, 2019

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Keywords: communication
• Other Study ID Numbers: 16-099

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: NO

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No