Physician-patient interaction and coping with cancer: the doctor as informer or supporter?

The physician-patient relationship may be important in helping cancer patients to cope with their disease, but little research has focused on the role of the physician in the process of coping with cancer. The objective of this study was to investigate the patients' experience of the informational and emotional aspects of physician-patient interactions, and the relevance of these two aspects of such interactions for the coping process.

In three focus group sessions, patients were interviewed about their relationships with their physicians. Statements about physician-patient interactions were subjected to quantitative and qualitative analysis.

How physicians helped the patients to cope with their illness was seldom spontaneously mentioned in any of the three focus group sessions. The patients frequently described specific encounters with doctors, often with an emotional content. When asked, they indicated that these encounters had been important in their adaptation to their illness.

The findings indicate that coping strategies tend to remain an implicit topic in physician-patient interactions. Some patients consider emotional components of physician behavior to be significant for their coping. Physicians should consider more explicitly therapeutic strategies to enhance patient coping behaviors.