3. The Effects of Racial Trauma on Mental Health
5. A Socio-Ecological Framework for Understanding Racial Disparities in Child Welfare
POSTER 4
Traumatic and uncertain: Clinicians’ perspectives on prognostic uncertainty in the context of metastatic cancer
Abstract
For many patients, a diagnosis of metastatic cancer is traumatic. It is frequently experienced as sudden and catastrophic, consistent with the DSM-5-TR’s definition of a traumatic event. Furthermore, past research has found a positive association between metastatic cancer and PTSD symptoms. Despite these well-documented findings, there is a limited understanding about ways in which medical professionals care for patients living with metastatic cancer, particularly regarding how they recognize and address the traumatic symptoms experienced by their patients. Given emerging breakthroughs in research related to novel treatments, which has altered how metastatic cancer was once perceived, clinicians and patients have increased hope as well as higher uncertainty. Thus, in addition to the traumatic experience of metastatic cancer, clinicians and patients alike now report difficulty balancing both hope and worry. In this changing landscape of oncology care, it is imperative to further understand how clinicians approach, manage, and experience the traumatic and now uncertain reality of metastatic cancer. Qualitative in-depth semi-structured interviews will be conducted with 20 health care professionals across the interdisciplinary cancer care team at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center. Grounded theory will be utilized along with a psychodynamic theoretical framework to elucidate the subjective experiences of clinicians and ultimately allow for the creation of a unified theory regarding how the interdisciplinary oncology team approaches, manages, and experiences prognostic uncertainty at various levels--with their patients, within the interdisciplinary care team, and within themselves.