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This page is an AI-assisted Turkish summary of the study presented at the 26th World Congress of Psychiatry. The study belongs to the presenting authors; please refer to the original source when citing it.

Epidemiology and Public Health

Epidemiology and population health

Breaking bad news takes place both in individual clinical encounters and through communication at the population level, and the study presented aims to identify patients’ and their relatives’ preferences for receiving such news.

Breaking bad news in healthcare occurs at two distinct levels: individual clinical encounters and population-level public health communication. While clinical protocols focus on empathy and patient understanding, public health frameworks emphasize transparency, trust-building, and risk management across the population. Effective communication of medical information is becoming essential not only to the quality of care but also to respect for patient autonomy; various studies have shown that clear, empathetic communication tailored to patients’ preferences can significantly improve treatment adherence, reduce anxiety, and strengthen trust in the healthcare team. In everyday clinical practice, however, the individual preferences of patients and those accompanying them regarding when, how, and in what level of detail they wish to receive information are not always explored or taken into account. The study aims to understand the preferences of outpatients, inpatients, and their family members for receiving bad news. Four groups of interest will be identified: patients newly admitted to hospital and their family members/accompanying persons, and patients attending a history-taking interview at an internal medicine outpatient clinic and their family members/accompanying persons. No findings have yet been reported in the abstract; only the study’s rationale and design are presented.

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