Literacy Enhancement and Writing across the Curriculum: A Motivational Addendum

This thought piece supplements the preceding article with complementary information drawn from a national literacy project underwritten by the Ford Foundation. This project attempted to persuade teachers in all disciplines to become more proficient in the use of written exercises and to encourage an expanded conception of literacy as an essential cornerstone of education. As a part of the writing-across-the curriculum (WAC) efforts, this extensive project helped to organize these efforts by identifying the obstacles to enhanced literacy, specifying innumerable techniques for use in diverse contexts, and motivating faculty to intensify their work on this dimension of any curriculum. This paper serves to expand the more localized focus of Jensen and McQueeney\u27s article and to suggest some practical advice for implementing the goals of the WAC movement

Medical Students’ Views and Ideas About Palliative Care Communicatio Training

This study focused on the undergraduate medical student to identify views and ideas held toward palliative care communication training, pedagogical approaches to this training, and its perceived effectiveness and use in the medical field. Two focus groups consisting of fourth-year medical students were conducted, and their responses were analyzed using grounded theory categorization. Results indicated that students: (a) prefer to learn nonverbal communication techniques, (b) believe that natural ability and experience outweigh communication curriculum, (c) view the skill of breaking bad news as largely dependent on knowledge and expertise, and (d) prefer curriculum on palliative care and hospice to consist of information (eg, advance directives) rather than communication skills. Implications for these interpretive themes are discussed as well as future research and practice.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

Verbal Play and Multiple Goals in the Gynaecological Exam Interaction'

This report investigates audio-taped gynaecological exam interactions that took place between one nurse practitioner and 41 female patients. Twelve instances of verbal play were transcribed from these exam conversations and analysed in order to demonstrate ways in which play sequences display participants' orientation to non-medical goals of the exam. Such goals include recognising the practitioner and patient as persons rather than as technician and technical object and reducing the face-threat of the exam. It is suggested that the analysis of naturally occurring conversation permits access to the conversational practices used by interactants both to generate and to achieve multiple goals.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

Palliative care and the family caregiver: Trading mutual pretense (Empathy) for a sustained gaze (compassion)

In this conceptual piece, we survey the progress of palliative care communication and reflect back on a chapter we wrote a decade ago, which featured the communication concept of mutual pretense, first described by Glaser and Strauss (1965). This work will include an update on family caregivers and their role in cancer caregiving as well as a review of current palliative care communication curriculum available for providers. And finally, we will spotlight the conversation and research going forward on the subject of health literacy for all stakeholders; patients, families, providers, and systems. We feature one family\u27s story of incurable cancer and end of life to revisit the needs we identified ten years ago, which are still present. Goals for going forward in chronic and terminal illness are suggested in a health care context still too void of palliative care communication resources for providers, patients, and especially family caregivers

Communication Skills for Professional Nurses

How nurses communicate with other health professionals, persuade patients to comply with medical treatment or document treatment is vital to the treatment of patients. This volume enables nurses to develop proficiency in written and verbal communication to help them demonstrate their competency and credibility to fellow nurses, other health care professionals and patients. The authors discuss the fundamentals of interpersonal communication such as its transactional nature. Scenarios of effective and ineffective communication techniques, with guiding questions and case studies, give nursing students and practicing nurses an opportunity to analyze their own responses to certain situations.https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/communications-books/1005/thumbnail.jp

The COMFORT initiative: Palliative nursing and the centrality of communication

Little attention has been paid to the specific communication training needs of nurses in palliative care. A narrative-based approach to communication, or narrative nursing, is proposed as a framework for developing holistic communication preparation for nurses. Building on clinical and nonclinical research in hospice, palliative care, and medical education settings, the authors present the COMFORT initiative as an outline of the tenets of narrative nursing. COMFORT is an acronym for communication, orientation and opportunity, mindfulness, family, oversight, reiterative and radically adaptive messages, and team. Explication of each concept is provided alongside a case study vignette that details communication properties at work. Integration of the COMFORT initiative into nursing education is proposed

Communication as comfort: Multiple voices in palliative care

This exceptional work explores the complexities of communication at one of the most critical stages of the life experience--during advanced, serious illness and at the end of life. Challenging the predominantly biomedical model that informs much communication between seriously ill and/or dying patients and their physicians, caregivers, and families, Sandra L. Ragan, Elaine M. Wittenberg-Lyles, Joy Goldsmith, and Sandra Sanchez-Reilly pose palliative care--medical care designed to comfort rather than to cure patients--as an antidote to the experience of most Americans at the most vulnerable juncture of their lives. With an author team comprised of three health communication scholars and one physician certified in geriatrics and palliative medicine, this volume integrates the medical literature on palliative care with that of health communication researchers who advocate a biopsychosocial approach to health care. Applying communication theories and insights to illuminate problems and to explain their complexities, the authors advocate a patient-centered approach to care that recognizes and seeks to lessen patients\u27 suffering and the many types of pain they may experience (physical, psychological, social, and spiritual) during life-threatening illness

Communicating a terminal prognosis in a palliative care setting: Deficiencies in current communication training protocols

The goal of this study was to understand the use and effectiveness of current communication protocols in terminal prognosis disclosures. Data were gathered from an interdisciplinary palliative care consultation service team at a Veterans Hospital in Texas, USA. Medical communication guidelines, a consistent component in United States palliative care education, propose models for delivery of bad news. However, there is little empirical evidence that demonstrates the effectiveness of these guidelines in disclosures of a terminal prognosis. Based on ethnographic observations of terminal prognosis meetings with dying patients, palliative care team meetings, and semi-structured interviews with palliative care team practitioners, this study notes the contradictory conceptualizations of current bad news communication guidelines and highlights that communicating a terminal prognosis also includes (1) adaptive communication based on the patient\u27s acceptability, (2) team based/family communication as opposed to physician-patient dyadic communication, and (3) diffusion of topic through repetition and definition as opposed to singularity of topic. We conclude that environmentally based revision to communication protocol and practice in medical school training is imperative. © 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Promoting improved family caregiver health literacy: evaluation of caregiver communication resources

Objectives: Family caregivers of cancer patients have a vital role in facilitating and sharing information about cancer, revealing a need to develop caregiver health literacy skills to support caregiver communication. The goal of this study was to investigate caregiver print materials and develop and assess a new caregiver communication resource titled A Communication Guide for CaregiversTM. Methods: Using a model of six domains of caregiver health literacy skills, print cancer education materials were collected and evaluated for caregiver communication support. A new caregiver communication resource was also developed and assessed by caregivers and healthcare providers. Caregivers reviewed content and assessed utility, relatability, and reading quality. Healthcare providers also assessed whether the material would be understandable and usable for cancer caregivers. Results: Only three of the 28 print materials evaluated were written at the recommended sixth grade reading level and only five addressed all six caregiver health literacy skills. Readability scores for A Communication Guide for CaregiversTM were at the sixth grade level, and caregivers reported its contents were relatable, useful, and easy to read. Healthcare providers also rated the material as easy for patient/family members of diverse backgrounds and varying levels of literacy to understand and use. Conclusions: Existing print-based caregiver education materials do not address caregivers\u27 health literacy skill needs and are aimed at a highly literate caregiving population. A Communication Guide for CaregiversTM meets health literacy standards and family caregiver and provider communication needs. The findings are relevant for healthcare professionals who provide cancer education. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Palliative care communication in oncology nursing

Oncology nurses consistently exhibit distress when communicating about end-of-life topics with patients and families. Poor communication experiences and processes correlate with emotional distress, moral distress, and work-related stress. The National Consensus Project (NCP) for Quality Palliative Care developed clinical practice guidelines to establish quality standards for the practice of palliative care. NCP\u27s guidelines are expressly intended as an interdisciplinary document and are representative of the inherent interdisciplinary nature of palliative care. Communication\u27s value to palliative and oncology nursing is unique because those two specialties include a high frequency of challenging interactions for patients, families, and healthcare professionals. The COMFORT communication curriculum, a holistic model for narrative clinical communication in practice developed for use in early palliative care, is posed as a resource for oncology nurses with a series of practice case examples presented against the backdrop of NCP\u27s eight domains of quality palliative care. © Oncology Nursing Society