Jul 22, 2019
This episode features Rebecca Anderson (Marie Curie Palliative
Care Research Department, University College London, London,
UK). Poor communication from healthcare professionals is a
common complaint from relatives of patients at the end-of-life.
Communication with relatives at this time is important for high
quality end-of-life care and for relatives’ long-term well-being.
Common communication strategies are identified including
highlighting the patient’s deterioration to aid decision-making,
references to patient wishes, providing relatives with options,
tailoring information to individuals and using pacing and staging
of information. Healthcare professionals state a belief in using
honest, direct language and involving families in decision-making,
but there is variation in the extent to which this is implemented
in practice. Nurses and allied healthcare professionals play an
important role in providing individualized communication with
relatives. There is a need for more research on communication with
relatives in palliative care settings and with different members of
the multidisciplinary team. Training is needed to help healthcare
professionals to translate communication guidelines into practice
while considering their own emotional needs. Interventions such as
question prompt list could also be used to help relatives get the
information they need.
Full paper available from: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0269216319852007
If you would like to record a podcast about your published (or
accepted) Palliative Medicine paper, please contact Dr Amara Nwosu:
anwosu@liverpool.ac.uk