Dignity Therapy

Improving experiences for cancer patients and their families

Dignity Therapy is the most studied psychosocial intervention in palliative care and has seen an uptake in healthcare facilities providing care to patients with advanced cancer worldwide.

Dr. Harvey Max Chochinov is a Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Manitoba and a Senior Scientist at the CancerCare Manitoba Research Institute. He began his career at the former Manitoba Cancer Treatment and Research Foundation in 1987 after returning from completing a Fellowship at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Dignity Therapy is the most studied psychosocial intervention in palliative care and has seen an uptake in healthcare facilities providing care to patients with advanced cancer worldwide.

Dr. Chochinov and Mr. John Farber helped establish what would evolve into the current Department of Patient and Family Support Services at CCMB.

In 1992 he received his first research grant from CancerCare Manitoba Foundation, launching a program of research in psychosocial oncology and palliative care that has been praised for its innovation and impact around the world.

His work on dignity in the context of life-threatening and life-limiting illness has been ground-breaking and includes the development of outcome measures tracking dignity related distress; frameworks for ensuring the provision of dignity-conserving care; and a novel individualized psychotherapy coined Dignity Therapy.

A cancer diagnosis can be emotionally disorienting, affecting almost every aspect of a person’s life. Suddenly, one no longer feels like the person they once were, given cancer’s ability to touch people in deep and personal ways. This is where Dr. Chochinov’s research shined a light on identifying the various things that can influence a patient’s cancer journey.

He has shown the profound influence that healthcare provider attitude can have in shaping patient experience, and how patients look towards healthcare providers as a means of affirming their self-worth.

Whether they realize it or not, healthcare providers are often the ‘mirror’ into which patients and families gaze to gauge their perceived status and worth.

In 2022, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Chochinov hosted a three-part, virtual international symposium on Dignity in Care that included about 25 healthcare staff from CCMB. This workshop provided training in how healthcare providers could use empirically validated approaches to affirm personhood, thereby enhancing job satisfaction, and mitigating burnout while enhancing patient and family experience and healthcare outcomes.