You are invited to a conference on Conducting Difficult Conversations: Best Practices for Training Clinicians. This conference will be held in the R&T Auditorium at Harborview Medical Center on Friday, December 6, 2013 from 08:00-12:00.
Giving “bad news” to patients or family members is one of the most difficult communication skills in medicine. Imagine telling a parent that their child has died, or that the cancer has returned? Less dramatic, but equally challenging, are conversations about uncertainty in diagnosis or prognosis, or disclosures of medical error and its effects on the patient. These are life-changing conversations and research shows that the patients and family members involved will remember the impact of these discussions, for better or for worse, for years afterward.
Unfortunately, most medical trainees get very little formal instruction in the skill of effectively communicating in difficult or high-stakes scenarios. Fewer still have the opportunity to practice these skills away from the bedside. In many cases, we simply hope that the resident has an opportunity to work with a gifted attending and can learn these skills by observation and emulation.
This is too casual an approach to transmitting a crucial professional competency.
Over the past 6 months we have been looking into ‘best practices’ in teaching these skills to clinical trainees. Many examples are found right here, within UW Medicine. Our goal is to identify, implement and disseminate a model for training ALL UW Medicine residents in conducting difficult conversations.
On December 6th, we are pleased to feature a presentation from Dr. Janet Serwint , Professor of Pediatrics and Director of the Pediatric Residency Program at Johns Hopkins University on her 10-year experience teaching pediatric residents about death and bereavement in a highly structured and evaluated program. We believe that she has a model that might be replicated, or modified for us in multiple disciplines, here. We are especially interested in bringing nursing, social work, spiritual care and other practitioners into the training environment, along side their medical colleagues.
Also that morning, we will review existing UW Medicine communication training curricula and look for core components shared by all. Then, we will present a proposal for an inter-professional training model involving a didactic/cognitive component as well as opportunities to practice with ‘standardized patients’ portraying bereaved patients or families. The morning will end with a discussion about the feasibility, constraints, and synergies of such a model as it intersects with residency training & competency requirements, staff training needs, UW Medicine strategic priorities, the promotion of humanism in healthcare and the drivers of the patient experience.
Please save the date and plan to join!
If you will be able to attend all or part of the morning, please RSVP to Ann Marchand via email: marchand@uw.edu
