CONTEXT: Advancing the science of serious illness communication requires methods for measuring characteristics of conversations in large studies. Understanding which characteristics predict clinically important outcomes can help prioritize attention to scalable measure development.
PURPOSE: To understand whether audibly recognizable expressions of distressing emotion during palliative care serious illness conversations are associated with ratings of patient experience or 6-month enrollment in hospice.
METHODS: We audio-recorded initial palliative care consultations involving 231 hospitalized people with advanced cancer at two large academic medical centers. We coded conversations for expressions of fear, anger and sadness. We examined the distribution of these expressions and their association with pre-post ratings of Feeling Heard & Understood and 6-month hospice enrollment following the consultation.
RESULTS: Nearly 6 in 10 conversations included at least one audible expression of distressing emotion (59%; 137/231). Among conversations with such an expression, fear was the most prevalent (72%; 98/ 137) followed by sadness (50%; 69/ 137) and anger (45%; 62/137). Anger expression was associated with more disease-focused end-of-life treatment preferences, pre-post consultation improvement in feeling heard & understood and lower 6-month hospice enrollment. Fear was strongly associated with pre-consultation patient ratings of shorter survival expectations. Sadness did not exhibit strong association with patient descriptors or outcomes.
CONCLUSION: Fear, anger and sadness are commonly expressed in hospital-based palliative care consultations with people who have advanced cancer. Anger is an epidemiologically useful predictor of important clinical outcomes.