Behavioral pre-consultation proposal: analysis of physician-caregiver-patient communication in pediatric cancer

ABSTRACT

Objectives: The main goal of this paper was to analyze the effect of a pre-consultation interview model on the communicative behavior of physicians, patients and caregivers in the pediatriconcohematology context. Methods: This study was composed by a baseline and an intervention phase. The pre-consultation interview occurred before the consultation with the physician andrevealed caregiver and patient’s main demands. A sheet with these demands was attached to the patients´ records as a reference for the following consultation. In this study, two pediatriconcohematology doctors were asked to participate, besides eight patients, ages ranging from 4 to 12 years and their caregivers, ages ranging from 22 to 44 years. Altogether there were 31recorded consultations in baseline, without the pre-consultation interview, which was administered to another 30 consultations in intervention phase. Results: The analysis was made througha descriptive evaluation by taking the average of frequencies that a specific behavior category occurred. The results revealed that the child’s behavior of offering information to the doctor more than doubled compared to the baseline average. Moreover, the frequency in which the physician gave information to both patient and caregiver also doubled. Conclusions: These data give support to more efficient psychosocial interventions that might decrease behavioral costsassociated to childhood cancer treatment and improve communication during consultation