The ‘right kind’ of pain: talking about symptoms in outpatient oncology consultations

Abstract

Despite improvements in cancer management over the past 25 years, unrelieved symptoms continue to be reported. Little is known about how patients' problems and concerns are communicated to professionals during oncology treatment. This qualitative study investigates the process of communication between cancer patients and oncologists during consultations in outpatient clinics of a regional teaching hospital. Data were collected by nonparticipant observation and audiotaping consultations. Analyses were by qualitative content analysis and conversation analysis. An objectives, strategies and tactics model was applied to organize the findings. Seventy-four consultations between cancer patients and 15 doctors were observed and audiotaped. Pain talk is defined and identified as a substantial topic, occurring in 39 out of 74 consultations. Doctor-initiated questions are the predominant discourse feature and are prominent not only in initiating discussions but also in directing further talk (e.g. over three-quarters of doctor-initiated questions are in a closed form which focus narrowly on limited physical aspects of patients' pain). This limited information exchange is used alongside other communication tactics to identify the ‘right kind’ of pain that may benefit from cancer therapy and to truncate talk of problems perceived to be outside of this specialist remit. Although individualized, holistic care is the expressed philosophy of the clinic, our data show that doctors tightly control the agenda to focus narrowly on pain which was amenable to radiotherapy, chemotherapy, surgery or hormone manipulation. Inadequate exploration of patients' pain is likely to be detrimental to symptom control.