An interesting study about the expectations of cancer patients underscores a desire for their oncologists to use, not only their considerable medical skills, but emotional intelligence -- sprinkled with some old fashioned TLC -- when treating and, hopefully, healing them.

Above all, based on the responses of three surveys taken by 508 patients undergoing radiation treatments for lung, breast or prostate cancer over a two-year period, respondents were nearly unanimous (95 percent) about desiring their oncologists to be honest about their chances of survival and being cured. A bit on the unusual side, however, lung cancer patients wanted slightly less honesty about their conditions (91 percent), and prostate cancer patients desired more than the median (97 percent).

Simplicity was just as important. Dividing the survey participants by education, 95 percent of high school graduates greatly preferred explanations about their radiation treatments in easily understood, everyday language, compared to 91 percent of college grads and 84 percent of post-graduate patients.

Generally, patients weren't concerned much about formalities either. Seventy-nine percent of them didn't care if their doctors wore their trademarked white coats and just as many preferred to be called by their first names.

That's a huge discrepancy from a 2001 study in the Annals of Internal Medicine that discovered slightly more than a third of some 260 Chicago-area doctors would give their terminally ill cancer patients an honest assessment of their survival, and 40 percent would knowingly give them an inaccurate, overly optimistic estimate.

ScienceDaily November 5, 2009

WebMD November 4, 2009

ABC News June 18, 2001