Doctor-family-patient communication in pediatric oncology/hematology: diagnosis and treatment disclosure

The significance and importance of parental and patients informing problems, their influence on the quality of children’s treatment and life and on the condition of other treatment participants (medical stuff, children’s families) at pediatric oncology/hematology couldn’t be overestimated. Numerous researches show that psychological problems of treated children and their families (such as anxiety, dissatisfaction, distress connected with the disease and provided medicinal manipulations, non-compliance, proneness to conflict, sever emotional reactions to the medical interventions and decisions, resistance to the treatment, refusal and so on) are caused by deficit children’s and parental knowledge and beliefs about disease, poor information about treatment possibilities and limitations, recovery chances and outcomes. Nevertheless, current statement of the problem of informing process, traditions of informing process in Russia in oncology\hematology are still extremely under investigated. By analyzing the literature dedicated to this problem and summarizing own experience of psychological work with children, families and medical stuff at pediatric oncology\hematology, authors of this article share their own reflections about organization and improvement of the quality of the communication and the informing of families and children\adolescents by medical stuff during the treatment. The main complications and ways of optimization of the informing at the different stages of treatment process with allowances made for social and cultural, individual and age specific aspects are discussed.

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