Helping patients make decisions about complementary and alternative treatments: the social work role.

Increasingly people are using complementary and alternative modalities (CAM) to cope with and manage cancer. Many patients, however, do not know how to access credible information and make informed treatment decisions. Social workers are in a unique position in the healthcare team to facilitate patients' decision-making about CAM.

Patient-physician communication regarding use of complementary therapies during cancer treatment.

It is estimated that as many as 80% of adult cancer patients use at least one form of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) during or after conventional treatment. Studies of physician-patient communication about the use of CAM have concluded that patients frequently do not tell their oncologists about their use of CAM and physicians consistently underestimate the numbers of their patients using CAM. The purpose of this multi-site study was to assess newly diagnosed cancer patients' and oncologists' communication practices with regard to complementary therapies.