Grant: Project Grant - PA: Breast Cancer Research

When people get sick, what is often overlooked in their health care is who they are as a person. This can be difficult on patients and families. It can also result in healthcare providers becoming emotionally detached, decreasing their ability to feel compassion, lessening their job satisfaction and overall resilience. The basic idea of what is called person-centered care is treating the person and not just the disease. Although healthcare providers try to recognize each person's individuality and unique circumstances, finding out who patients are as people often simply does not happens. This study will examine the impact of a simple intervention designed to help healthcare professionals find out who their patients are as people, and how this kind of information can affect the way patients experience whether they feel they were treated with compassion. Patients diagnosed with either breast cancer or lung cancer being seen at CancerCare Manitoba will be invited to participate. This intervention, called the Patient Dignity Question (PDQ), guides patients in a brief conversation led by the question 'what do I need to know about you as a person to take the best care of you possible'. While we successfully developed and tested this approach in palliative care., it has not been used much in the setting of cancer care. In phase 1 of this study, when patients will receive care as usual, we will measure compassion using the Sinclair Compassion Questionnaire. In phase 2, we will add the PDQ to usual care, asking patients to take part in a conversation about who they are as people. We will then be able to answer the question of whether finding out about who patients are as people affects the way they experience care, and particularly whether they feel they were treated with compassion. We will also examine the impact of the PDQ on health care practice and how this influences the experience of all types of healthcare professionals treating patients with cancer.