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Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

Communication With the Cancer Patient: Information and Truth

- EDITEURS : Professor Antonella Surbone , Professor Matjaz Zwitter - juin 2000

As patients are increasingly urged to take responsibility for their own health care, communication between physician and patient is a topic of growing interest. But when the patient is suffering from a serious disease, such as cancer, communication sometimes breaks down. Should physicians always tell patients the truth? If so, how? What does a physician say when the cancer patient is a young child? A single mother whose proposed treatment cannot be covered by insurance? An immigrant with different cultural views of sickness and death?

In Communication with the Cancer Patient Antonella Surbone, Matjaz Zwitter, and their co-authors explore a wide variety of topics relating to the subject of communicating with cancer patients. Reflecting the wide diversity of contributors and their subjects, special sections cover physician-patient communication issues in Africa, the Americas, Asia and the Middle East, Austraila and Oceania, and Europe. Throughout, the contributors draw on case studies and their own clinical experience to explore a topic of central importance to cancer treatment.