Abstract:
Introduction: Patient information during therapies and follow-up needs to be constantly adapted for a flawless integration of complex oncologic therapy concepts into clinical routine. This is a key step for an optimal, individualized patient information and guidance and, ultimately, also for patient outcome. Training in communication skills for medical staff is well established during medical school and residency training. But the fine-tuned communication in stressful situations to patients should also continuously be trained with all oncology staff (e.g. multimodal therapies, in emergency rooms, for end-of-life decisions, for novel therapies in clinical studies).
Method: Narrative Medicine in oncology might be a useful tool to further improve patient conversations in oncology. It respects the patient’s intimacy and privacy due to the anonymous text and can be used widely as a teaching tool. Narrative medicine can also be used to transfer critical medical information from health care staff to patients and their families. With the anonymous story telling this critical information comes from a certain distance but is still perfectly adapted to the personal needs of patient and families. The potential benefit for the introduction of story-telling in selected patient discussions and for staff teaching will be discussed.
First Results: A few, carefully selected examples of critical moments in a oncology patient-staff communication using narrative medicine will be presented.
Discussion and Outlook: Carefully designed cohort studies with/without added narrative medicine into patient information and guidance during oncologic therapies might be needed as a proof of concept in the near future. Only with a documented benefit in a clinical study setting, story-telling could be integrated as “evidence based” in the systemic patient information in interested oncology departments.
If and how AI could further support or even replace human story-telling with a better tailored, more concise individualized patient microstory information booklet for carefully chosen specific patient’s situation during a radiation oncology therapy is an attractive thought, but highly speculative today.
