Vikram Narayan, MD, on the importance of tailoring patient communication

In this video, Vikram M. Narayan, MD, discusses the background and key findings of the study, “Tailoring language for genitourinary function in patients with newly diagnosed prostate cancer to facilitate discussions in diverse populations and overcome health literacy barriers.” Narayan is an assistant professor of urology at Emory University and the director of urological oncology at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia.

Video Transcript:

I work at Grady Memorial Hospital, which is one of our safety net hospitals here in Atlanta. A challenge that we face at any hospital is being able to deliver information to a patient at the language at which they can understand and comprehend. One of the things that I think a lot of physicians don't realize is that even when we try and break things down into what we perceive to be simpler terms, there are still words and sayings that we say that a patient doesn't understand. Common things that we describe in urology include things like urethra [and] prostate—words that you and I may understand, but it turns out a lot of our patients don't understand.

This is a study that was done by Dr. Kerry Kilbridge in Boston through a collaboration with her. It was her project, and Dr. Viraj Master’s, one of my partners here. We essentially conducted a series of interviews with patients being treated for prostate cancer. All of the patients were underserved minorities. We did structured interviews with those patients to understand where they are in terms of comprehension from basic prostate cancer care discussions and how they would have liked that information to be delivered.

The key take home message of that study was that having assumptions about basic medical terminology that we think are simple may actually leave patients confused. You really do have to ask patients what they comprehend and use some of those basic teach back techniques that we're taught in medical school, like having patients present information back to you to make sure they've understood what it is that that was presented to them. This is a really important area of research, and we're really glad to see that published and for folks to be able to look at.

This transcript was AI generated and edited by human editors for clarity.