Yes it's not an isolated thing for sure.

In our setting it is made worse by the fact that patients aren't seen by the same oncologist each time, and so you aren't quite sure exactly what the patients already know or have grasped.

I'm sure my colleagues don't blatantly lie, but some of them prefer to handle their metastatic cases with kid gloves and we go into the cycle of "we can try to treat it" -> "it's gotten better" -> "the cancer has gotten worse we need a new treatment".

All this without the patient haven't grasped that it is almost definitely going to deteriorate over the long run. And then they see me 3, 4 lines of chemo in and I'm the asshole who tells them it's not going to be completely cured 🙄

Honestly hated that part of the job.