gms | German Medical Science

Introduction: Breaking bad news is a challenging task for physicians. Communication skills training (CST) improves effectively doctor’s performance in this part of medical work. Physician’s coping on breaking bad news still remains mostly disregarded. This qualitative study investigates physician’s and medical student’s coping strategies while breaking bad news to their patients.

Methods: Six physicians and six medical students took part in this qualitative study. The method of Stimulated Recall was used to investigate the subject’s emotions and thoughts while breaking bad news: therefore, conversations of physicians with their cancer patients were videotaped. The same procedure was done with consultations of medical students with standardized patients (SP). Sequences of breaking bad news were filtered by the researchers. According to the method of Stimulated Recall, those sequences of the subject’s own conducted conversations were shown to themselves. The subjects were interviewed assessing their emotions, thoughts and coping strategies observing their own interaction on video.

Results: By the time of conference we will present results of qualitative investigations.

Discussion: The method of Stimulated Recall will provide a deeper insight in physician’s coping of this challenging task. It also will provide information how to prepare medical students better for this duty . The findings will help to improve didactic concepts of communication between physicians and patients [1], [2], [3].