Perception of Doctors in Breaking Bad News in North Sudan: Are we in the right track?

Author(s): Amjed Abdu Ali, Sufian Khalid, Omnia Alsamwal, Reem Ibrahim, Awadelkareem Abdelgeyoom, Sara Osman, Mohammed Salaheldin, Abdelhaleem Elhussain, Esra A Saeed, Ali Adlan

Background: Bad news is defined as any news that adversely and severely affects an individual's view of his or her future. This study aims to assess doctors' perceptions of breaking bad news in Atbara, Ad-damer, and Alsalam Teaching Hospitals.

Methods: A cross-sectional descriptive hospital base study was conducted in Atbara, Ad-damer, and Alsalam teaching hospitals from the 1st of December 2018 to the 8th of January 2019. The information was gathered using a closedended questionnaire and analyzed with a statistical computer program (SPSS) version 21.

Results: The study revealed that 54% of doctors were not trained in breaking bad news, and only 46% of doctors were trained. The main age group whom they trained was between 25 and 30 years old. Also, more males were trained than females, with 56.7% and 41.4%, respectively. The study showed that the registrars were more trained than medical officers and house officers, with 63.2%, 36%, and 50%, respectively. 74% of doctors didn't hear about the global policy of breaking bad news. There was an association between certain factors and the level of training of doctors as conducted through the chisquare test as follows: age p value (0.0059), gender p value (0.014), clinical position p value (0.0024) and specialty p value (0.0019).

Conclusion: We concluded that half of doctors were not trained, and the majority of doctors didn’t hear about the policy of breaking bad news.