STRATEGIES FOR BREAKING BAD NEWS TO CANCER PATIENTS AND ITS IMPACT ON THEIR PSYCHOLOGICAL ADJUSTMENT: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW
Keywords:
Cancer patients, Communication, Bad news, Psychological adjustment, Systematic reviewAbstract
Objective: to carry out a systematic review in order to test the hypothesis, supported by theoretical literature, that the use of strategies for communicating bad news to cancer patients positively impacts their psychological adjustment process. Method: a search was performed (paired by two researchers) between the months of October 2019 and October 2020, in the PubMed, Medline, ScieElo, LILACS, Cochrane and Google Scholar databases, in addition to a manual search of the citations of the selected studies. All randomized clinical case trials, cohort studies and systematic reviews that included assessment of psychological adjustment of cancer patients before and after the communication of difficult news were included, without restriction of publication period, including studies in Portuguese and English. Integrative reviews and qualitative studies, as well as studies that did not include cancer patients as participants, were excluded. Types of participants: cancer patients receiving diagnosis for the first time. Data extraction, synthesis and analysis were performed separately, in a paired fashion. Results: From 98 records found, 6 articles were eligible, according to the study inclusion criteria: 2 randomized clinical case studies, 3 cohort studies and 1 systematic review, all with low to moderate risk for bias in general. Data were systematized using a non-meta-analytic narrative description. Conclusion: the way difficult news is communicated in the context of cancer patients has consequences on the adaptation process, development of functional coping strategies and psychological adjustment of the recipient of difficult news.
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