Spiritual Communication between Pediatric Oncologists, Caregivers, &
Patients with Brain Tumors
Abstract
Background: Spiritual care is recognized as an essential
component of standard care for children with cancer and their families.
Oncologists lack training in navigating spirituality discussions in
primary cancer care. The current landscape of spiritual dialogue during
clinical oncology encounters remains understudied. Procedures:
This qualitative study aimed to describe the frequency, context, and
content of religious and spiritual communication between pediatric
neuro-oncologists, caregivers, and patients with brain tumors during
disease reevaluation encounters. This study is part of the U-CHAT trial
(NCT02846038), a prospective longitudinal investigation of realtime
clinical communication across the trajectory of poor prognosis cancer.
Patients with brain tumors and their caregivers were eligible if their
primary oncologist estimated survival ≤ 50%. All disease reevaluation
encounters for enrolled patients were audiorecorded and underwent rapid
qualitative analysis to identify, summarize, and synthesize religious
and spiritual communication. Results: Religious or spiritual
references were identified in 23 (18%) of 129 total encounters.
References usually comprised a single religious or spiritual term, with
“prayer”-related language representing the majority of references.
Caregivers introduced spirituality dialogue more often than oncologists
(65% vs 35%). References were most often identified in the context of
discussion about an uncertain or uncontrollable future.
Conclusions: Results suggest oncologists rarely integrate
spiritual care into disease reevaluation discussions. In light of
recommendations from multiple consensus groups to integrate spiritual
care into cancer care, future work should explore how generalist
spiritual care training could better equip oncologists to attend to
spiritual needs that arise along the cancer trajectory.