Anna Ferguson RN, BSN, research nurse, Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, on talking about hope with patients who have cancer.

Ferguson says the team at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center starting informally talking about hope with patients and found that patients were passionate about the concept.

It is crucial to talk to patients about hope throughout the patient’s journey, Ferguson says, even if their diagnosis is grim. Ferguson says it is important for the community to develop a way to talk about hope independent of cure.

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Anna Ferguson, RN, BSN, on Talking About Hope with Cancer Patients

Anna Ferguson RN, BSN, research nurse, Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses how to talk about hope with patients who have been diagnosed with cancer.

Ferguson says conversations about hope become easier if nurses and physicians make the patient the focus. Physicians should not, and don’t want to, hold the power to give hope or take it away, Ferguson says. Because of this, some physicians will shy away from the topic of hope so that they don’t give an impression of false hope.

Ferguson says the best way to elevate the whole concept of hope is to make it of and about the patient. The only way to do that is to ask the patient questions that reveal what hope means to the patient, what they are hoping to gain from treatment, and what their hopes are for the future. By doing this, physicians and nurses create a thread of conversations with the patient that runs through the course of their relationship, Ferguson says.

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Anna Ferguson RN, BSN

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