Communication Between Black Patients With Cancer and Their Oncology Clinicians: Exploring Factors That Influence Outcome Disparities.

The evidence is low: most included studies were qualitative or cohort, and two were expert opinion, so findings describe experiences rather than tested nursing effects. The review was intended to focus on nurse-patient communication, but too few studies existed, so it included all oncology clinicians and most included articles were about physician-patient communication. The authors acknowledged that their identities and experiences may have shaped interpretation; the first and senior authors are White nurses. Included studies used different cancer diagnoses, locations, sample sizes, and racial labels, so results may not apply to every patient group. The review did not give a total number of participants across studies, only sample sizes from 14 to 1572.

The supplied metadata lists NIH extramural research support. The provided article text does not include an author conflict-of-interest declaration.

Do not read the five communication themes as evidence that changing communication will reduce cancer disparities. The review synthesized mostly qualitative and observational studies and tested no intervention.