The patient-physician relationship in the face of oncological disease: A review of literature on the emotional and psychological reactions of patients and physician

Abstract

The physician-patient relationship is daily destabilized by emotional reactions and psychic defenses that cancer arises in the two partners. Continued scientific and technological progresses which were reached by medicine in recent years, and particularly oncologic clinical discoveries, increased the chance of not only survival but also healing. Nevertheless, cancer diagnosis is still a hard existential text that destabilizes everyday life, all the psychic and relational balance, inevitably causing a psychological and social change not only in the patient who is affected but also into the wide social network around him (family, friends, doctors, healthcare team). The aim of this review is to understand how problems, feelings, emotions, distresses or defense mechanisms could garble the relation and the communication dynamics between physician and patients and then prejudicing the efficacy of oncologic therapeutic compliance. Pubmed and Scopus were searched, using strings related to "cancer", "physician-patient relations", burn-out", "compliance", and "communication", identifying literature published from 2000 to January 2015. Extracted papers were assessed for their relevance (10 of 412 papers initially reviewed). Results indicate that a good and empathetic relationship between physician and patient were related to good therapeutic adherence. In particular, a good physician-patient relation maximizes the impact of clinical therapies and reduces psychophysical implications.