Structured Communication Training Improves Oncology Clinician Self-Efficacy and Reduces Distress

High-quality communication serves as a fundamental pillar of clinical excellence, directly influencing patient safety, treatment adherence, and overall health outcomes [1, 2]. In oncology, structured communication training has been shown to increase clinician confidence in truth-telling by a mean difference of 16.86 [3]. Meta-analytic data involving 13 randomized controlled trials indicate that the patient-clinician relationship itself exerts a small but statistically significant effect on objective health outcomes, with an estimated effect size of d = 0.11 (p =.02) [1]. While patient navigation and integrative therapies like meditation or music therapy have expanded the supportive care toolkit, the core patient-clinician relationship remains the primary driver of the therapeutic experience [4, 5, 2]. A large-scale initiative now provides evidence on how structured training programs can be integrated into busy clinical workflows to support both patient care and clinician well-being.