Holding Hope for Cancer Patients with Serious Illness
When a cancer patient has a serious diagnosis, clinicians and families can struggle with how patients experience hope. \n\nThree distinguished palliative care physicians and researchers joined the podcast for a conversation about their recent paper in JAMA titled, \u201cHolding Hope for Patients with Serious Illness\u201d (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2784454).\n\nDrs. Abby Rosenberg, Robert Arnold, and Yael Schenker shared their own experiences treating seriously ill patients and talked about how we can navigate the tension between appreciating the potential therapeutic benefit of hope and being concerned about perceived unrealistic hopes:\n\n\u201cRather than being concerned that hope is either so fragile that it can be lost, or so powerful that it can overwhelm decision making, clinicians should remember that hope is protective, if not necessary, for managing serious illness. Holding complex, flexible, and diverse hopes enables patients to believe in the unlikely while simultaneously accepting the inevitable. The role of clinicians is to support both.\u201d\n\nAbby Rosenberg, MD, MS, MA, is a pediatric oncologist and palliative care physician and researcher at the University of Washington, where she directs the pediatrics component of the Cambia Palliative Care Center, and Seattle Children\u2019s Research Institute, where she directs the Palliative Care and Resilience Lab. She has an American Cancer Society Research Scholar Grant to study \u201cResilience Outcomes Among Adolescents and Young Adults with Advanced Cancer.\u201d\n\nRobert M. Arnold, MD, is a palliative care physician, Distinguished Professor of Medicine, and Chief of the Palliative Care Section at the University of Pittsburgh. He previously served as a member of the American Cancer Society\u2019s palliative care peer review committee.\n\nYael Schenker, MD, MAS, is a palliative care physician, Professor of Medicine, and Director of the Palliative Research Center (PaRC) at the University of Pittsburgh. She is a past recipient of American Cancer Society research funding, which supported her study of \u201cPrimary Palliative Care for Patients with Advanced Hematologic Malignancies.\u201d\n\n3:27 - The therapeutic benefit of hope and why it\u2019s helpful to patients and caregivers\n\n5:12 \u2013 Why clinicians sometimes feel the need to \u201ccorrect\u201d a patient\u2019s hope\n\n8:56 \u2013 How physicians can address the tension of appreciating the potential therapeutic value of hope but being concerned about perceived unrealistic hopes \n\n10:50 \u2013 On how physicians can help patients diversify and increase their hopes\n\n6:24 \u2013 How they became interested in this topic and decided to explore this topic in a broader way\n\n17:35 \u2013 Advice they would share with someone in medical school who might someday treat patients with a poor prognosis\n\n19:03 \u2013 A message for caregivers of a patient with a terminal illness