Dr Fabian Lang Discusses Provider-Patient Communication in CML

Fabian Lang, MD, of Goethe University Hospital in Frankfurt, Germany, discussed the importance of good communication between health care providers and patients with chronic myeloid leukemia.

Transcript

How can providers and health systems facilitate better communication between providers and patients?

I think, first of all, it's a kind of a balance of information. You need an informed patient who knows what therapies are available and how to deal with side effects and, as already mentioned, mainly focused on quality-of-life issues. And on the other hand, you need informed doctors who know about the medication, about the pitfalls, about the side effects, and how to bring both of them together. And apart from that, we have to learn about how to communicate with the patients in order to ensure compliance and efficacy, as I already elucidated.