Understanding the Cancer Patient: The Syndrome of Caregiver’s Plight

Comprehensive cancer care is a combination of tumor treatment with understanding the special concerns and needs of cancer patients. To understand the psychosocial problems of cancer patients requires knowledge of protocol (treatment of the tumor), plight (nonmedical ramifications of cancer), and promise (the caregiver's view of the patient's predicament). Caregivers can sometimes be more distressed by the plight of their patients than are patients themselves. In extreme instances, their vulnerability leads to what is called "Caregiver's Plight," a set of responses which interfere with adequate understanding and may result in progressive vocational demoralization, change to another field, and drastic impairment of self-esteem. Therapeutic suggestions for identifying and correcting caregiver's plight are proposed, including knowing how to cope better and how much to promise, sharing concern with colleagues, attempting to make smaller contributions, and using an exercise called the "Absent Witness," an imaginary self-monitoring review.