Study of the Therapeutic Use of Language in Patients With Metastatic Colorectal Cancer

Colorectal Cancer

Personal Communication, Doctor Patient Relations, Narrative Medicine

The purpose of this study is to determine if the degree of agreement between patients and their physicians regarding the story of the illness correlates with improved patient symptom control and quality of life. Another goal of the study is to examine the actual language used by patients and physicians in a specific clinical situation.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the co-created therapeutic narrative in scheduled office visits between adult patients with metastatic colorectal carcinoma and their medical oncologists in a community practice setting. The study will focus on the negotiation of the illness narrative and the semiotic (primarily linguistic) tools employed. The study will involve patients from a large community cancer center from Northeastern Pennsylvania (this center sees about 3,000 new patients each year). About 85% of patients with cancer in the United States are treated in this type of setting (National Cancer Institute, 2007), and so many results from this population are applicable to most cancer patients in the United States. The location of this study makes it very different from the majority of medical anthropological studies that are usually performed in urban academic medical centers or in sites outside of the United States or Western Europe. Although community cancer centers are the location of most of the treatment of patients with cancer in the United States, there are few to no studies published studying this patient population.

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United States