Effects of Provider Communication Behaviors and Shared Decision Making on QOL Among Advanced Cancer Patients

Purpose: Saudi patients are often not well informed about diagnoses, prognoses, and treatment options. Poor communication can lead to health care decisions that insufficiently meet patients’ preferences, concerns, and needs and that subsequently affect patient’s quality of life. Effective provider communication behaviors are needed to ensure that patients make informed and shared decisions about treatment, enable them to adhere to advice about managing their diseases, and help them adjust and adapt to the fact that they have a life-threatening disease. Moreover, shared decision-making remains an important element in improving patient’s wellbeing and satisfaction. The extensive body of literature supported that the relationship among provider communication behaviors, shared decision-making, and patient’s quality of life has yet to be fully established. However, most studies were conducted in Western contexts; no such study has been done in Saudi ArabiaThe primary purpose of this study to examine the relationships among provider communication behaviors, shared decision-making, and quality of life for patients with advanced cancer in Saudi Arabia

 Methods: Street’s ecological theory of patient-centered communication (2009) will guide this study. A convenience sample of 134 patients with advanced gastrointestinal, genitourinary, breast, lung or gynecological cancer will be recruited from KAAU hospitals in Jeddah. The design is cross sectional descriptive correlational study. The researcher will orally administers all three questionnaires, one on each of the following concepts: provider communication behaviors, shared decision-making and patient’s quality of life, along with the demographic data using Survey Monkey at the hospital where the patients are being treated. The demographic data and the data from all three questionnaires will be analyzed using simple linear regression and descriptive statistics.

Results: in progress

Conclusion: By focusing on cancer patients in Saudi Arabia, this study seeks to add to the empirical knowledge base about provider communication behaviors and shared decision-making, and it will help to advance the body of nursing knowledge related to health care communication in Saudi Arabia. The knowledge will also assist in further research to develop decision aids programs to enhance informed shared decision making in cancer care.