The "Time Factor" and Communication in Oncology and Palliative Care

In the field of medicine, the acquisition of communication skills is essential for an effective, complete and personalized treatment. This is particularly true for delicate fields such as incurable diseases, palliative care (PC) and end-of-life (EOL) care. The time-factor is an important concept in the communication process, meaning here not only "the time spent in communication", often scarce in healthcare systems, but also a multiform existential dimension involving all the different figures present in the treatment process (patient-time; physiciantime; family-time; institution-time). The perception of time as an existential explanation for the dimension that the patient is living in can have an individual psychological equivalent that must be acknowledged in order to obtain truly individualized communication and a personalized approach in the doctorpatient relationship