Regardless of how they frame the discussion, doctors that deliver bad news are viewed as less compassionate by their patients, a new study suggests.

Women that saw an "enhanced compassion" videotape rated the physician as warmer and more caring, sensitive, and compassionate than did women who watched the "standard" videotape. Women that saw the enhanced compassion videotape were significantly less anxious after watching it than women in the other group.

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One hundred twenty-three healthy female breast cancer survivors and 87 women without cancer were recruited for this study. A randomized pre-test control group design with a standardized videotape intervention was used.

Participants completed the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), an information recall test, a compassion rating, and physician attribute rating scales.

On a scale of 0 to 50, with 50 being the least compassionate, patients gave the doctor with good news a score of 19 compared to a score of 26 for the doctor with bad news.

What's more, 57 patients said they preferred the doctor delivering the more optimistic message compared to 22 that preferred the doctor delivering the less optimistic news.

"For example, would the patient perception be different with an in-person interaction, a longer discussion, a personal relationship with the physician, or at a different time in the patient's illness?" said Dr. Teresa Gilewski of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.

Dr. Eduardo Bruera, the study's lead author from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, said the findings may help explain why doctors intuitively have a difficult time delivering bad news to their patients.

Researchers say future research should account for the trust patients have with their doctors, too.

Still, they also suggest researchers should craft techniques to help doctors deliver bad news without the content affecting the patients' perceptions of their compassion.