End Of Life Communication

With a focus on end-of-life discussion in aging and chronically ill populations, this book offers insight into the skill of communicating in complex and emotionally charged discussions. This text is written for all clinicians and professionals in the fields of healthcare and public health who are faced with questions of ethical deliberation when a patient’s illness turns from chronic to terminal. This skill is required to manage care well in an age of advanced technology, and numerous autonomous choices. With a palliative care and ethics focus, the manuscript provides case studies illustrating issues which occur in the acuity and chronicity of end of life. Clear tools for clinicians, such as scripting and “the advance care planning video library" are included. The book focuses on the unique concept of outpatient ethics, including readmission prevention and shortened length of stay through good communication for clinicians who will be required to conduct this discussion with patients. The ethical undertone in this text provides a perfect opening for application in healthcare ethics classes, both in fields of public health and healthcare. Medical scholars and physicians, nurse practitioners and physician’s assistants, as well as social workers, both in practice and training, will benefit from this text.

This book examines the dialectic between fictional death as depicted in the media and real death as it is experienced in a hospital setting. Using a Terror Management theoretical lens, Davis and Crane explore the intersections of life and death, experience and fiction, to understand the relationship between them. The authors use complementary perspectives to examine what it means when we speak and think of death as it is conceived in cultural media and as it is constructed by and circulates between patients, health professionals, and supportive family members and friends. Layering analysis with evocative narrative and an intimate tone, with characters, plot, and action that reflect the voices and experiences of all project participants, including the authors’ own, Davis and Crane reflect on what it means to pass away. Their medical humanities approach bridges health communication, cultural studies, and the arts to inform medical ethics and care.

'The Textbook of Palliative Care Communication' is the authoritative text on communication in palliative care. Uniquely developed by an interdisciplinary editorial team to address an array of providers including physicians, nurses, social workers, and chaplains, it unites clinicians and academic researchers interested in the study of communication.

This scholarly volume explores communication at the end of life, emphasizing palliative care and the circumstances of patients in need of such consideration.

For many health care professionals and social service providers, the hardest part of the job is breaking bad news. The news may be about a condition that is life-threatening (such as cancer or AIDS), disabling (such as multiple sclerosis or rheumatoid arthritis), or embarrassing (such as genital herpes). To date medical education has done little to train practitioners in coping with such situations. With this guide Robert Buckman and Yvonne Kason provide help. Using plain, intelligible language they outline the basic principles of breaking bad new and present a technique, or protocol, that can be easily learned. It draws on listening and interviewing skills that consider such factors as how much the patient knows and/or wants to know; how to identify the patient's agenda and understanding, and how to respond to his or her feelings about the information. They also discuss reactions of family and friends and of other members of the health care team. Based on Buckman's award-winning training videos and Kason's courses on interviewing skills for medical students, this volume is an indispensable aid for doctors, nurses, psychotherapists, social workers, and all those in related fields.

Janet's skill in this book lies in her ability to combine theory with narrative and natural science with humanity to create a text that resonates deeply.bringing to light the message that intellectual knowledge is nothing if not accompanied by sensitive delivery and humanity. Mary Kiely in the Foreword This practical thought-provoking guide provides the unemotional clear and accurate advice necessary for communicating with patients in a palliative care setting. Completely up to date this book includes new initiatives born of the End of Life Care Strategy (2008) and details the ethics of key issues in palliative care. Crucially it considers the fine art of communication - the pivotal aspect of being a palliative care expert that is so difficult to quantify and teach. It uses genuine anecdotes and case studies to bring theory to life and assist in everyday application. Communication in Palliative Care is a wide-ranging invaluable resource for palliative care professionals across all clinical settings.

Communication in Palliative Nursing presents the COMFORT Model, a theoretically-grounded and empirically-based model of palliative care communication. Built on over a decade of communication research with patients, families, and interdisciplinary providers, and reworked based on feedback from hundreds of nurses nationwide, the chapters outline a revised COMFORT curriculum: Connect, Options, Making Meaning, Family caregivers, Openings, Relating, and Team communication. Based on a narrative approach to communication, which addresses communication skill development, this volume teaches nurses to consider a universal model of communication that aligns with the holistic nature of palliative care. This work moves beyond the traditional and singular view of the nurse as patient and family educator, to embrace highly complex communication challenges present in palliative care-namely, providing care and comfort through communication at a time when patients, families, and nurses themselves are suffering. In light of the vast changes in the palliative care landscape and the increasingly pivotal role of nurses in advancing those changes, this second edition provides an evidence-based approach to the practice of palliative nursing. Communication in Palliative Nursing integrates communication theory and health literacy constructs throughout, and provides clinical tools and teaching resources to help nurses enhance their own communication and create comfort for themselves, as well as for patients and their families.

This multi-contextual approach serves to integrate current findings, expand our theoretical understanding of the end of life, prioritize the significance of competent communication for scholars and practitioners, and provide a solid foundation upon which to build pragmatic interventions to assist individuals at the end of life as well as those who care for and grieve for those who are dying.