Specialty / Expertise

GI Oncology
Palliative Care

Research Interests

Communication between doctors and patients
Palliative Care
Integrative Medicine

Current Research Projects

Title: Patient and Family Assessment of Doctor Communication
Funding Source: Lance Armstrong Foundation
The major goals of this project: To compare patient and family caregiver evaluations of physician communication performance with an expert content based coding system at pre- and post- Oncotalk time points and to identify and describe key qualities of physician communication that patients and family caregivers perceive as improved and valued as a result of the Oncotalk intervention

Title: The Center for Integrative and Supportive Medicine
Funding Source: Fannie Rippel Foundation
The major goals of this project: This project will develop guidelines for use of integrative medicine for both health care professionals and patients. During this project a web site will be developed with the guidelines, educational tools, and short instructional videos about how to communicate about integrative medicine in cancer care.

Title: Training Oncology Faculty to teach Communication
Funding Source: NCI R25 CA 119012-O1A1
The major goals of this project: This project is a faculty development program for Oncology faculty to bring communication skills training as developed in Oncotalk to their home institutions.

Title: Enhancing doctor-patient communication
Funding Source: NCI/NIH RO1 CA 98486
The major goals of this project: This project is a qualitative and quantitative study of how patients with hematologic malignancies deal with prognosis and decision-making.

Title: General Clinical Research Center (GCRC)
Funding Source: NCRR M01-RR-00037
The major goals of this project: The GCRC is a university-wide resource funded by the National Institutes of Health to support peer-reviewed clinical investigations or other funded research involving human subjects.

Research Staff

Training

Dr. Back received his AB from Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA and his MD from Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA. He completed his Internal Medicine Residency at the University of Washington, Seattle, WA. He was a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Oncology at the University of Washington and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, WA.

Selected Publications:

Back AL, Arnold RM, Baile WF, Fryer-Edwards KA, Alexander SC, Barley GE, Gooley TA, Tulsky JA. Efficacy of Communication Skills Training for Giving Bad News and Discussing Transitions to Palliative Care. Arch Intern Med, 2007 Mar 15; 167:1-8.

Back, A.L., Arnold, R.M., Discussing prognosis: How much do you want to know? Talking to patients who do not want information or who are ambivalent. J Clin Oncol 2006 Sep 1;24(25):4214-7.

Back AL, Arnold RM, Baile WF, Tulsky JA, Fryer-Edwards K. Approaching Difficult Communication Tasks in Oncology. CA Cancer J Clin 2005 55:164-167.

Back AL, Arnold RM. Dealing with conflict in caring for the seriously ill. JAMA 2005 293:1374-1381.

Back AL, Arnold RM, Quill TE. Hoping for the Best and Preparing for the Worst. Ann Intern Med 2003 138:439-443.

Back AL, Starks H, Hsu C, Gordon JR, Bharucha A, Pearlman RA. Clinician-patient interactions about requests for physician-assisted suicide: a patient and family view. Archives Int Med 2002 162(11):1257-1265.

Shanafelt TD, Bradley KA, Wipf JE, Back AL. 2002. Burnout and Self-reported Patient Care in an Internal Medicine Residency Program. Ann Intern Med 2002 136:358-367.

Meier DE, Back AL, Morrison RS. 2001. The Inner Life of Physicians and Care of the Seriously Ill. JAMA 2001 286:3007-3014.