Cancer patients’ respect experiences in relation to perceived communication behaviours from hospital staff: analysis of the 2012-2013 National Cancer Patient Experience Survey

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.DOI 10.1007/s00520-015-2973-5Purpose: Respect experiences are poorly understood despite respect being central to professionalism in healthcare and patient well-being, and needed for optimal patient care. This study explores which patient-perceived communication behaviours from hospital staff contribute most to cancer patients’ respect experiences and account for variation in their experience by socio-demographic and clinical characteristics. Methods: Secondary analysis of data from the 2012-2013 National Cancer Patient Experience Survey of 45191 patients with a primary cancer diagnosis treated in English National Health Service trusts providing adult acute cancer services who provided data on experienced respect and dignity. Results: Both autonomy-supportive and caring/emotionally sensitive behaviours were associated with reported respect, although the latter showed stronger associations and accounted for most differences in reports of respect between patient groups. Differences in respect were found by gender, race/ethnicity, age, the presence of long-standing conditions, treatment response, time since first treated for cancer (p<.001), employment and type of cancer (p<.05). Conclusions: The study questions the tendency to conceptualise respect primarily in terms of autonomy-supportive behaviours and shows the relative contribution of autonomy-supportive and caring/emotionally sensitive behaviours in explaining disparities in respect experiences. More attention should be paid to affective communication behaviours from hospital staff to reduce disparities in respect experiences

How can Respectfulness in Medical Professionals be Increased? A Complex but Important Question.

Respectfulness is demanded of doctors and predicts more positive patient health-related outcomes but research is scarce on ways to promote it. This study explores two ways to conceptualize unconditional respect from medical students, defined as respect paid to people on the basis of their humanity, in order to inform strategies to increase it. Unconditional respect conceptualized as an attitude suggests that unconditional respect and conditional respect are additive, whereas unconditional respect conceptualized as a personality trait suggests that people who are high on unconditional respect afford equal respect to all humans regardless of their merits. One-hundred and eighty one medical students completed an unconditional respect measure then read a description of a respect-worthy or a non-respect-worthy man and indicated their respect towards him. The study found a main effect for unconditional respect and a main effect for target respect-worthiness but no interaction between the two when respect paid to the target was assessed, supporting the attitude-based conceptualization. This suggests that unconditional respect can be increased through relevant interventions aimed at increasing the relative salience to doctors of the human worth of individuals. Interventions to increase unconditional respect are discussed

Mutual suffering: a nurse\u27s story of caring for the living as they are dying

The aim of this study was to uncover the meaning of the lived experience of mutual suffering in relation to the care of a dying patient. The study took place within an acute medical ward in a district general hospital on the south coast of England as part of a reflective practice development programme. Parse\u27s human becoming theory provided a framework for the study and Parse\u27s research methodology was adopted. Understanding the nature of human relationships within nursing practice is central to nursing work, enabling patients and their health-professional carers to live and work healthily in the context of human becoming. Illuminating mutual suffering through reflection enables nursing and health-care professionals to acknowledge the paradoxes of practice and, thus, create new strategies for the provision of care and the improvement of practice, so that quality of life is maximized for the patient and for themselves