Background: Data on patients' needs with respect to physicians' ethical behavior and virtues are important but not available in most cases.
Patients and methods: In an iterative process together with patients' representatives, we developed a standardized questionnaire which was distributed to the representatives of the Women's Self-Help after Cancer in Germany. We started with the classical ethical virtues and clustered them to characteristics. The patients' representatives were asked to rate in different communications settings.
Results: One hundred eighty-six patients' representatives took part in the survey. For four communication situations (first communication on symptoms, diagnosis of cancer, choice of therapy, doubts on therapy), competence was rated as very important by 80-89% and as important by 6-7%; honesty as very important by 78-89% and as important by 5-12%; respect as very important by 66-71% and as important by 19-21%; and patience as very important by 55-68% and as important by 6-24%. Compassion was rated as less important, with only 24-31% rating it as very important and another 26-32% as important. Additional desires expressed by the participants were physicians having more time (9.1%) and a better relationship between physician and patient (7.0%).
Conclusion: Competence, honesty, respect, and patience are important characteristics which should be focused on in communication training of medical students and physicians. In spite of compassion being rated as less important, training on compassion/empathy might help doctors to improve coping with the continuous confrontation with complications, progress, suffering, and death of their patients.
Keywords: Breast cancer; Ethical considerations; Patient needs; Physician-patient communication; Virtues.