One of the nation’s leading cancer centers is breaking ground with research that aims to prove that physicians can be taught to communicate with more empathy.
Teaching Empathy
At Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where a prognosis can be life-altering, physicians learn new phrases and communication techniques.
“We’ve identified different challenging communication situations and divided them into discrete modules: breaking bad news, discussing prognoses, shared decision making and so on,” says Philip Bialer, MD, interim director of the Communication Skills Training and Research Laboratory at MSKCC.
