Psycho-oncology
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Multicenter Study Observational Study
The contagion of optimism: The relationship between patient optimism and palliative care clinician overestimation of survival among hospitalized patients with advanced cancer.
Clinicians frequently overestimate survival time among seriously ill patients, and this can result in medical treatment at end of life that does not reflect the patient's preferences. Little is known, however, about the sources of clinicians' optimistic bias in survival estimation. Related work in social networks and experimental psychology demonstrates that psychological states-such as optimism-can transfer from one person to another. ⋯ Patients' optimism may have some influence over their clinicians' prognostic judgments.