Listening to women's narratives of breast cancer treatment: A feminist approach to patient satisfaction with physician-patient communication

Traditional health communication research often has ignored sex and gender and has employed a quantitative biomedical perspective to predict behavior. In contrast, this study analyzed women's narratives of their breast cancer treatment to uncover conceptualizations of patient satisfaction with physi cian-patient communication. In their unfolding (nonlinear) narratives, pati ents viewed satisfaction as a negotiation process with physicians in which themes of respect, caring, and reassurance of expertise were prominent. Two root themes (dialogic approach to power and contextualization) acted as un derlying dynamics or tensions throughout their narratives. Patients' ways o f knowing and preferences for feminine communication styles influenced perc eptions of physician-patient communication satisfaction.