How to Break Bad News


Book Description




How To Break Bad News


Book Description

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.




Grandma's Dead


Book Description

Avoid the messy confrontations that accompany delivering bad news personally and let one of these cute baby animal postcards deliver the devastating message for you. Are you afraid to tell your girlfriend that her ass looks fat? Do you need to explain to your nephew that dreams don't come true? Why not let a cute, fuzzy bunny do it for you! We understand how hard it is to tell someone that you're sleeping with his wife, so let a photograph of a duckling sleeping on a teddy bear soften the blow. These perforated postcards answer all of your cowardly prayers—you'll finally be able to tell the truth without ever conquering your fear of confrontation. Let these adorable baby animals supply a silver lining to any bad situation and avoid, a long, tearful afternoon explaining why daddy's never coming home.




The Art of Breaking Bad News Well


Book Description

As Head of Oncological Surgery and the Gynecology Clinic at Berlin’s Charité Comprehensive Cancer Center, Jalid Sehouli is one of the world’s leading cancer specialists. Every day, he experiences situations in which conversations take on a life-or-death significance. Delivering bad news is one of the most difficult tasks we face in life, especially for professionals such as doctors, police, or crisis intervention personnel, yet it is rarely touched on during training. Over the course of their career, a doctor will hold conversations with around 200,000 patients and their relatives that invariably involve delivering good or bad news. Either way, existential questions will arise, and the way the news is delivered is vital: recent studies show that it has a significant impact on patients’ quality of life and the way they experience treatment. Mixing his wide-ranging professional experience with personal stories, Sehouli describes the emotions and perspectives of those who have to give and receive bad news from a broad perspective. His book can be helpful for anyone who has to deliver bad news—managers, friends, or parents.




How to Break Bad News to People with Intellectual Disabilities


Book Description

This book offers unique and flexible guidelines that can be used by practitioners to ease the process of breaking bad news to people with intellectual disabilities. The guidelines, which are adaptable to individual communication ability and level of understanding, address the many complex needs of people with intellectual disabilities who can find understanding and accepting news that has a negative impact on their life a very difficult task. In the book, Irene Tuffrey-Wijne covers a range of different types of bad news, from bereavement and illness to more minor issues such as a change of accommodation, and offers highly practical and effective tips that will help carers and practitioners ensure that bad news is relayed as sensitively and successfully as possible. An easy-to-use and comprehensive guide, this book will be an invaluable resource of information for carers, health professionals such as doctors and nurses as well as families of people with intellectual disabilities.




Practical Plans for Difficult Conversations in Medicine


Book Description

Based on sound, proven strategies and peppered throughout with illustrative examples, Practical Plans for Difficult Conversations in Medicine provides the tools and knowledge necessary to start and sustain a genuine conversation at a moment when the first thought is "I have no idea what to say now."




Cambridge Handbook of Psychology, Health and Medicine


Book Description

Health psychology is a rapidly expanding discipline at the interface of psychology and clinical medicine. This text offers a comprehensive, accessible, one-stop resource for clinical psychologists, mental health professionals and specialists in health-related matters.




Manners, Morals, and Medical Care


Book Description

This book is a unique reference for medical students, residents, and allied healthcare workers who are just entering the medical field. It outlines in an anecdotal, yet pedagogical manner what one should expect and what is expected of an individual when embarking on a career at a clinic or hospital. Organized into two sections, the book defines in clear terms student responsibilities, expectations, and appropriate collegial interactions through the implementation of historical, moral, and ethical narrative techniques. Chapters discuss the justification of “medical professionalism” as defined in medical school core curriculum, and how and why such ideological norms exist. The book employs clinical scenarios based on incidents chosen to illustrate appropriate behavioral guidelines. The book also addresses common but difficult interpersonal problems all practitioners deal with that require empathy including delivering bad news, working with families, sexual harassment, the importance of diversity, and burnout in the work place. Each chapter includes short biographies meant to give context of the integral role of medicine in the development of our modern complex diverse society. Comprehensive, socially conscious, and written in an engaging yet didactic narrative style, Manners, Morals, and Medical Care serves as an authentic source and a practical guide on the responsibilities of a practitioner when caring for patients.




Neurologic and Neurodegenerative Diseases of the Larynx


Book Description

This comprehensive text summarizes what is known about the myriad of different neurological conditions that cause dysfunction of communication, swallowing, and breathing as it relates to the upper aerodigestive tract. It serves to provide clinicians and scientists, at all levels of experience, a practical and thorough review of these diseases, their management, and frontiers in science. Chapters are written by experts in these conditions from a broad spectrum of medical specialties in order to create a book that is inclusive of diagnostic and therapeutic considerations that clinicians should think about when caring for patients with these conditions. Neurologic and Neurodegenerative Diseases of the Larynx will be an instrumental resource in guiding clinicians to better recognize the subtle and not so subtle voice, swallowing, and airway manifestations of these diseases, and improve management of patient symptoms and concerns in order to maximize both quality of life and longevity. It will aide otolaryngologists, laryngologists, neurologists, speech language pathologists, and other allied health care professionals in developing a more efficient, evidence-based, patient-focused, and multi-specialty approach to managing these complex and challenging patients.




Breaking Bad News


Book Description

Breaking Bad News provides practical guidance on the key principles needed to create a framework for discussions with the patient Key Features: Concise, practical guide Features a simple 10 step approach Clear explanations with key phrases for you to use For doctors, students and healthcare professionals The ability to impart bad news well is an important skill for all doctors and many healthcare professionals. But it is perceived as a particularly stressful part of the job, even though it is a skill that can easily be understood and practised. When handled well it can significantly enhance the relationship with the patient and their relatives. 10 Simple Steps The principles are presented as 10 simple steps which emphasise that the process of breaking bad news is a negotiation with the patient to ensure that you provide them with the correct level of information they need at that time. The steps also encourage the patient to talk and think about their situation. Each of the steps is clearly explained and sample questions and key phrases are provided to help you navigate these discussions effectively and with compassion. If you learn to ask questions of the patient first and then elicit their concerns, you will help them and you will gain their trust.