Communication Skill Training for Care Partners Who Accompany Cancer Patients to Their Medical Visits

Some 40% of older patients are routinely accompanied to their medical visits by care partners. When actively engaged in visit communication, or their engagement is heightened by pre-visit prompts, patients benefit by more patient-centered visits and higher visit satisfaction. Over 60% of patients with cancer are routinely accompanied to their medical visits by a care partner but relatively little is known about their visit communication, receptivity to skill training or if training might lead to greater active engagement in visit communication. The study objective is to explore these questions by having cancer care partners (CCPs) evaluate a brief CCP-focused intervention and explore their future intention to use skills. CCPs are defined here as unpaid adults who routinely accompany patients with breast, colon, prostate or lung cancer to their medical visits. We recruited CCPs through CloudResearch Prime Panels and enrolled 91 criteria-qualified participants. The CCPs were asked to evaluate four 2-minute cancer-specific narratives presented by a simulated video care-partner (SVCP) on four measures of authenticity and to rate a set of 13 SVCP demonstrated skills on clarity and their intention to use skills. CPs averaged 43 years old, were 64% female and mostly family members (88%). The majority of CCPs (68%) rated the narratives as completely authentic and skill clarity highly (4.2 on a 5-pt scale). They also expressed a strong intention to use 6.2 skills and a moderate intention to use 3.8 skills at an upcoming visit. CCPs positively evaluated the skills intervention and expressed strong to moderate intention to use demonstrated skills. This level of intention is associated with small to medium behavior change suggesting that a brief skills-focused training may heighten CCPs active engagement in visit communication and benefit patient outcomes in ways suggested by studies of older primary care patients.