Table 2.

Major themes and minor actions performed by caregivers during clinical decision-making encounters

Major themes	N (%)	Minor actions	N (%)	Exemplary quote/interaction
Caretaking	42 (79%)	Provision of general support	34 (64%)	Caregiver: “It’s great news about your scans. That’s wonderful.”
		Management of medication/treatment	32 (60%)	Caregiver: “She had mentioned that possibly she would have to go off of her arthritis medicine. Is that still the case or what’s going on with that?” Oncologist: So, you [patient] probably are going to come off your Methotrexate
		Aid in treatment history recall	23 (43%)	Caregiver: “After her fifth round is when she fell and broke her hip and had to have a hip replacement.”
Decision-making	37 (70%)	Participation in decision-making	37 (70%)	Caregiver: “What is the success rate of these, that you're talking about?” Oncologist: “So, i mean…” Caregiver: “Because she’s had so much treatment and continues to mutate… After she had a treatment one time, I don’t know, we had a discussion on, hell, the treatment’s worse than the disease.”
Management of logistical concerns	34 (64%)	Management of insurance or money	9 (17%)	Caregiver: “Now, when you do the scans, like three months apart, does insurance cover it?” Oncologist: “Yeah. They cover all that.”
		Management of pharmacy	10 (19%)	Caregiver: “Now the medications, will I be picking them up here or would there be a pharmacist?”
		Management of appointment or treatment scheduling	25 (47%)	Caregiver: “So we come next week, get labs, and then wait to see what they are before we get the shot next week, right?”
		Management of travel concerns	21 (40%)	Caregiver: “So it’ll be, come up here, spend the night, come in that morning to have it done, then go home?”
Facilitation of cancer understanding	29 (55%)	Questioning about cancer in general	7 (13%)	Oncologist: “My gut instinct is that you may actually have a germline mutation here. Something that sort of predisposed you a little bit to get cancer. It’s not a guarantee that somebody’s going to get cancer, it just means it’s a little more likely if they have something that they’ve had since birth.” Caregiver: “Kind of like a cancer gene?” Oncologist: “Exactly, a cancer gene. I don’t know that for sure, but there are several things on here that are pretty common, and they’re common to see sort of spontaneously, but they’re also pretty common to see people who sort of have it from birth. I don’t know, I’ll send your official genetics referral so that they can look at that.”
		Questioning about patient’s specific cancer biology	27 (51%)	Caregiver: “You just talked about the cancer there, it’s in the bone area, other parts beside the breast. Do you know about what period of time, we’re talking about, that it took for that to happen?”
Participation in symptom discussion	29 (55%)	Caregiver-initiated questioning or emphasis on symptom severity	23 (43%)	Caregiver: “I thought of one. You talked about her moving around a little bit. One thing that keeps her from moving around is her pain in her hip and in her ribs.”
		Caregiver back-up of patient symptom description	20 (38%)	Oncologist: “Yeah. No fevers or chills? Okay. Any chest pain with that? You feeling short of breath at all?” Patient: “If I walk a long ways.” Caregiver: “Yeah, when she’s walking.”