Understanding Communication in Healthcare to Achieve Trust (U-CHAT)

Study Summary

Honest, clear, and empathetic communication between pediatric oncologists (POs) and parents of children with cancer (POCCs) is imperative to facilitating therapeutic alliance and ensuring that medical management aligns with the families' goals of care. Communication is particularly important during conversations about disease reevaluation, which often necessitate parental decision-making in the context of emotional distress. POs employ a spectrum of communication styles and strategies during challenging conversations, and there is no consensus regarding linguistic or thematic metrics for high quality communication of upsetting information. In order to better understand how POs communicate difficult information to POCCs, the investigators propose a pilot study designed to accomplish the following primary aim: Primary Objective: * To identify recurrent verbal and nonverbal (e.g. the use of pauses/silence) communication techniques employed by POs in the delivery of difficult prognostic information to POCCs through content analysis of audio-recorded conversations between POs and parents of children with high risk cancer at the time of disease reevaluation. The study expects to enroll up to: 80 patient participants, 80 parents, and 15 primary pediatric oncologists (total = 175). Non-primary oncologist members of the clinical care team, extended family members, or friends of the family may also participate, if they choose to do so.