Bad news=less compassionate physician?

Regardless of how they frame the discussion, physicians who deliver bad news may be seen as less compassionate by their patients, a new study in JAMA Oncology suggests. Patients who watched videos of fictional interactions between practitioners and patients felt the physicians delivering bad news were less compassionate than those giving good news, researchers found.

Until recently, physicians and researchers believed that physicians who delivered bad news in an empathetic tone would be seen as sincere, said Eduardo Bruera, MD, the study’s lead author from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. But it seems the news itself has an impact on the way patients see physicians.

On a scale of 0 to 50, with 50 being the least compassionate, patients gave the physician with good news a score of 19, compared to 26 for the physician with bad news. Fifty-seven patients said they preferred the physician delivering the more optimistic message, while 22 preferred the physician delivering the less optimistic news. The findings may help explain why physicians intuitively have a difficult time delivering bad news to their patients, according to Bruera.

Source: Reuters