An interventional study of Empathic Communication Skills (ECS) training and Standard of Care participant interaction in Lung Cancer, sponsored by Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Recruiting at 12 sites in United States. Open to participants aged 18 Years to 100 Years, including healthy volunteers. Per ClinicalTrials.gov, last updated 2026-10-07.
Sponsored by Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center · Not applicable, Interventional, and Other
Research indicates that perceived stigma within medical encounters is prevalent and problematic for lung cancer patients' well-being and quality of cancer care. Promoting empathic communication appears to be a potentially effective intervention target to help reduce patients' perceptions of stigma within clinical encounters; however, no formal trainings exist that focus on teaching empathic communication to oncology care providers (OCPs). Building upon favorable findings from a prior R21 (R21CA202793) and the importance of developing interventions to address lung cancer stigma, our goal is to conduct a national trial of empathic communication skills (ECS) training to facilitate improvements in the medical and psychosocial care of patients through de-stigmatizing interactions with OCPs for patients diagnosed with lung cancer.
The aims of this study are:
to evaluate the effect of the ECS training vs. WLC on patients' reported primary outcomes (lung cancer stigma), and secondary outcomes (perceived clinician empathy, satisfaction with communication, psychological distress, patients' experience of clinical encounter, and overall patient satisfaction).
Additionally, acceptance of referral to tobacco cessation (for those currently smoking) will be explored; and
Our central hypothesis is that the ECS training will demonstrate significant short-term improvements in clinicians' uptake of empathic skills and self-efficacy and will be superior to WLC with regards to patient reported measures of stigma, clinician empathy, satisfaction, and overall experience.
7,243 studies on the registry are indexed under Lung Neoplasms; 1,557 are open to participants now.
This study's planned enrollment of 1,232 is above the median of 60 across 5,295 interventional studies indexed under Lung Neoplasms.
Browse Lung Neoplasms studies →Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center is the lead sponsor of 1,930 studies on the registry; 328 are open to participants now.
Of its 129 completed or terminated interventional studies of FDA-regulated products, 66 (51%) have results posted.
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Site Eligibility
OCP Participant Eligibility
Patient Eligibility
English and/or Spanish speaking;
Exclusion Criteria:
Patient Exclusion
Site and OCP Exclusion
Providers participate in Empathic Communication Skills (ECS) training
Behavioral: Empathic Communication Skills (ECS) training
Providers complete all study measures and are offered ECS training after data collection is completed at their site.
Other: Standard of Care participant interaction
Participants will engage with oncology care providers/OCP who have undergone Empathic Communication Skills (ECS) training
Behavioral: Empathic Communication Skills (ECS) training
Waitlist control group - WLC
Other: Standard of Care participant interaction
The overall training goal of this 2.25 hour module ECS module is to enhance OCP recognition and responsiveness to lung cancer patients' empathic opportunities by communicating understanding, alleviating stigma and distress, and providing support. The ECS training also provides tools to OCPs to buffer/inoculate patients against stigmatizing attitudes and behaviors by others such that lung cancer patients who currently or formerly smoked can be given "small doses" of an opposing viewpoint (termed as "preparing patients for recurring smoking questions") and suggestions of "counterarguments" in order to make them resistant to future stigmatizing attacks by others
Standard of Care participant interaction
Uptake of communication skills using standardized patient assessment/SPAs
A SPA involves a 12-minute video recorded interaction between the Oncology Care Provider/OCP and the Standardized Patient/SP on a given clinical scenario, using standardized scripts by the SP. Each OCP will participate in one SPA prior to their ECS training and one SPA following training or the timed control period. In contrast to clinical consultation recordings with varied clinical situations that do not necessitate the use of all strategies and skills, the semi-structured nature of SPAs permits appraisal of all desired elements of training.
Time frame: 3 months
Uptake of empathy skills using standardized patient assessment/SPAs
A SPA involves a 12-minute video recorded interaction between the Oncology Care Provider/OCP and the Standardized Patient/SP on a given clinical scenario, using standardized scripts by the SP. Each OCP will participate in one SPA prior to their ECS training and one SPA following training or the timed control period. In contrast to clinical consultation recordings with varied clinical situations that do not necessitate the use of all strategies and skills, the semi-structured nature of SPAs permits appraisal of all desired elements of training.
Time frame: 3 months
Plan to share: Yes — Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center supports the international committee of medical journal editors (ICMJE) and the ethical obligation of responsible sharing of data from clinical trials. The protocol summary, a statistical summary, and informed consent form will be made available on clinicaltrials.gov when required as a condition of Federal awards, other agreements supporting the research and/or as otherwise required. Requests for deidentified individual participant data can be made beginning 12 months after publication and for up to 36 months post publication. Deidentified individual participant data reported in the manuscript will be shared under the terms of a Data Use Agreement and may only be used for approved proposals. Requests may be made to: crdatashare@mskcc.org.
From the registry record's own update history. This site started tracking changes on Sep 25, 2026; for anything earlier, see the record history on ClinicalTrials.gov ↗
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Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center