Humanitarian care: Facilitator of communication between the patients with cancer and nurses

Effective communication with the patients and engaging patients in decision-making and care planning are necessary to improve health outcomes and satisfaction with the treatment. Communicating effectively can help prevent and manage complications following the treatment of cancer. Therefore, this study aimed to describe and explain cancer patients’ communication facilitators' experiences between patients and nurses.

This is a qualitative conventional content analysis study. The study was conducted on 22 cancer patients who were selected based on a purposeful sampling approach. Semi-structured interviews were performed to collect the data. The data were then analyzed using conventional content analysis. Also, the Lincoln and Guba criteria were used to measure the trustworthiness of the data.

The researchers have identified the main theme as “humanitarian care”. Besides, five categories of “good-naturedness”, “empathy”, “patience”, “confidentiality”, and “honesty” were also extracted from 18 subcategories.

Effective nurse-patient communication facilitates patients’ healing, enhances clinical outcomes and improves patients’ response to treatment. Hence, these ethical features need to be reinforced among nurses.