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Qualitative Health Research
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Telling Their Stories, Telling Our Stories

Physicians' Experiences With Patients Who Decide to Forgo or Stop Treatment for Cancer

Irena Madjar

Auckland, New Zealand

Lea Kacen

Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel

Samuel Ariad

Soroka Medical Center, Beer-Sheva, Israel

Jim Denham

Mater Hospital, Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia

There is currently very little research on how physicians respond to patients with cancer who decide to forgo or stop medically recommended "curative" therapy. The purpose of this article is to report on a qualitative study with 12 oncology specialists in Israel and Australia that addresses this question. The findings indicate that physicians tend to construct patients and their decisions in terms of mutually exclusive categories that focus on curability of the disease, rationality of the patient's decision, and patients' personal attributes. Physicians' constructions of their experience focus on uncertainty and concern. Although contextual factors play a role in how physicians act in this situation, Israeli and Australian oncologists are remarkably similar in how they describe their own and their patients' experiences.

Key Words: cancer • treatment decisions • refusal of treatment • doctor-patient interaction • qualitative research

Qualitative Health Research, Vol. 17, No. 4, 428-441 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/1049732306298806
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