EBMT 2026 | The development of a patient question prompt list for improving aftercare following alloSCT

We explored communication failures between patients and physicians over the time span of five years by now and identified a lot of topics, domains, needs which are neither communicated nor addressed. And developing a patient prompt list would provide the patient with being in charge, bringing up the questions, so as not to forget them, so I would label them – that’s a list of the forgotten questions – and to motivate them to bring up their complaints, that was the biggest motivation. And if you could think of a checklist by physicians, that may be less effective. First, physicians tend to forget or, for time reasons, not to ask those questions. Second, some of those questions are quite sensitive, and leaving control to the patient as to what topics are brought up and what topics are not brought up would be of enormous help. And actually, that also was identified as an issue through the development of the list. So, taken together, we hope to kind of foster patients’ self-confidence to bring up their complaints and to target also issues which are usually not shared. Just to provide some examples, cognitive impairment is rarely shared; physicians basically never ask about impaired sexuality, and patients are shy to share that. Compliance and alternative medicine – patients would share that if asked, but physicians never ask. So, all those topics kind of are elephants in the room; it’s not only one, but several elephants. And kind of addressing that elephant – this is the hope we have with this progress.

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