Original Contribution Assessing Patient-Centered Communication in Cancer Care: Stakeholder Perspectives

Purpose: Patient-centered communication is critical to quality cancer care. Effective communication can help patients and fam-ily members cope with cancer, make informed decisions, and effectively manage their care; suboptimal communication can contribute to care breakdowns and undermine clinician-patient relationships. The study purpose was to explore stakeholders’ views on the feasibility and acceptability of collecting self-re-ported patient and family perceptions of communication experi-ences while receiving cancer care. The results were intended to inform the design, development, and implementation of a struc-tured and generalizable patient-level reporting system. Methods: This was a formative, qualitative study that used semistructured interviews with cancer patients, family members, clinicians, and leaders of health care organizations. The constan