Abstract
The aim of this paper is to study the degree of truth telling of diagnosis to cancer patients in the teaching hospitals and to identify the optimal support by nurses. The survey was conducted on October 1st, 1999 at wards. Two hundred twelve patients were studied and their average age was 64.2 (standard deviation of 14.4).
60.4% of doctors told diagnosis as “cancer or malignant tumor”, 34.9% as “tumor” who depend on the patient's decision whether to tell malignancy or not and the remaining 4.7% did not tell the diagnosis. On the other hand, 55.2% of nurses want doctors to tell “cancer or malignant tumor”. Interestingly, the percentage is lower than that of the doctors. The agreement between doctors and nurses here is 84.9%. Among 15.1% where doctors and nurses are not in agreement on the truth telling, only 25% of them discussed whether to tell the truth or not. It is also found that the nurses are not emphasizing “patient' s desire” or “right to know”
It was revealed that nurses are not involved in the truth telling process of cancer patients. The challenge for us is to establish a system on truth telling so that the nurses can have routine discussion with doctors and provide more patient support.
