I*CARE Roundtable
Roundtable with Dr. Terrance L. Albrecht (31:58)
Dr. Albrecht is the Program Leader for the Communication and Behavioral Oncology Program, Assistant Program Leader for the Population Studies and Prevention Program, Director of the new Behavioral and Field Research Core, and Principal Investigator of the Cancer Information Service Partnership Program at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute in Detroit, Michigan. She is also a Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at Wayne State University School of Medicine.
Roundtable with Dr. Antonella Surbone (28:49)
Dr. Surbone 
trained in radiation therapy and medical oncology at the National Tumor Institute in Milan , Italy and at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda. She is currently professor of Medicine at New York University, New York, USA and lecturer in moral philosophy and bioethics at the Universities of Rome and Turin, Italy. From 2004 to 2006 she was of Head of the Teaching Research & Development Department of the European School of Oncology in Milan, Italy. She has published extensively in the fields of medical oncology and bioethics, focusing on the patient-doctor relationship, truth telling and cultural competence, ethical and social implications of genetic testing for cancer predispositions, ethics of clinical trials in the elderly, and disclosure of medical errors in oncology. Selected References (pdf)
Roundtable with Dr. Anthony Back (21:00)
Anthony Back, M.D. is professor of medicine at the University of Washington in Seattle. He is director of the Cancer Communication and Palliative Care Programs at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance (SCCA) and Fred Hutchinson Cancer 
Research Center (FHCRC). He is a board-certified medical oncologist whose primary research interests are doctor-patient communication and palliative care, and he practices gastrointestinal oncology. Dr. Back was a faculty scholar on the Project on Death in America and is a member of the ASCO Communication Task Force. He is the principal investigator for The Oncotalk Teach, communication skills training program for Medical Oncology fellows (R25 CA 119019), and is an investigator on other NIH-funded observational studies of doctor-patient communication about hope and information (R01 PI J.R. Curtis) and prognosis in hematologic malignancies (R01 P.I. Stephanie Lee).
MedScape interview with Dr. Walter Baile
(External link. M. D. Anderson does not endorse external sites. May need to Log In.)
Although all clinicians need to be adept at communicating with patients, oncologists in particular are faced with difficult conversations on a regular basis. Informing a patient about a cancer diagnosis, the fact that a tumor is inoperable, the recurrence of disease, or the progression of disease are daily challenges for many oncologists. Considering the frequency of bad news in the cancer setting, communicating in a clear, respectful, and supportive way is a very important skill for oncologists. Dr. Walter Baile, professor of Behavioral Science and director of the I*CARE Program, talks about communicating with cancer patients, focusing on those particularly delicate conversations that take place when the news is bad.