What not to do

• That's what I learned today and those are important lessons! Luckily not by doing the wrong thing myself, but rather watching painfully as a man received a cancer diagnosis/prognosis in an ass-backwards way when the physician involved told me he was unclear how much information the patient knew about his situation.

• Did he ask the patient what was his understanding of the situation? No.
• Did he ask anything of the patient other than specific yes/no questions pertaining to specific symptoms? No.
• How did the term word "tumour" get brought up? Just shortly after doing a rectal exam while he was putting his pants back on at which point the patient was told that the rectum was quite narrow and that it was likely the tumour causing that.
• I can’t really say that it got worse after that, but let’s just say it didn’t get any better. The odd thing is that the physician walked away remarking that the atmosphere in the room was “tense” but didn’t seem to associate that with anything to do with his communication style. Yikes. It’s too bad that more physicians don’t get critiqued and given specific, useful feedback on their communication skills on a regular basis. I think the college of physicians and surgeons needs to do some “mystery shopping” like we used to use at the Bank to test out our service and give some non-biased feedback on where you need to redouble your efforts.

• One thing I’ve noticed about cancer care is the look of fear in many patients’ eyes when you walk in the room to meet with them. They’re already familiar with the idea of cancer since they’ve come to the cancer agency but the docs there have a chance to allay some of that fear or not. Most do a great job at reassuring/calming the patient even when the news isn’t good, but some miss that opportunity. I sure hope that I end up in the former group vs the latter when I get to that stage.