Mastering Communication with Seriously Ill Patients PDF Download

Author: Anthony Back
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139477927
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 148

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Book Description
Physicians who care for patients with life-threatening illnesses face daunting communication challenges. Patients and family members can react to difficult news with sadness, distress, anger, or denial. This book defines the specific communication tasks involved in talking with patients with life-threatening illnesses and their families. Topics include delivering bad news, transition to palliative care, discussing goals of advance-care planning and do-not-resuscitate orders, existential and spiritual issues, family conferences, medical futility, and other conflicts at the end of life. Drs Anthony Back, Robert Arnold, and James Tulsky bring together empirical research as well as their own experience to provide a roadmap through difficult conversations about life-threatening issues. The book offers both a theoretical framework and practical conversational tools that the practising physician and clinician can use to improve communication skills, increase satisfaction, and protect themselves from burnout.

Author: Wayne A. Beach
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136486666
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 167

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Book Description
The grandmother granddaughter conversation examined in this book makes explicit what the detailed study of interaction reveals about two social problems--"bulimia" and "grandparent caregiving." For the first time, systematic attention is given to interactional activities through which family members display ordinary yet contradictory concerns about health and illness: * a grandmother's (who is also a registered nurse) attempts to initiate, confront, and remedy her granddaughter's lack of responsibility in admitting bulimic "problems" and committing to professional medical assistance; * a granddaughter's methods for avoiding ownership of the alleged bulimic problems by discounting the legitimacy of her grandmother's expressed concerns. Through analysis of a single audio-recorded and transcribed conversation, Wayne Beach reveals the altogether pervasive and often troubled talk surrounding family medical predicaments. From a careful review of extant theories that seek to explain eating disorders and grandparent caregiving, it becomes clear that an overreliance on self-report data has promoted underspecified understandings of "social contexts" -- conceptualizations void of real time practices and interactional consequences mirroring how families manage their daily affairs and understandings regarding health and illness. In contrast, this volume draws attention to family members' embodied interactional activities. Here it is seen, for example, how methods for expressing concern and caring by individuals may nevertheless eventuate in interactional troubles and problems between family members. The analysis reveals that, while displays of basic concerns for others' health and well being are routine occurrences between family members in home environments -- and of course, across friendship and various support networks -- even the delicate and well-intended management of such occasions guarantees neither agreement on the nature of the alleged "problems" nor, consequently, a commitment to seek professional help as a means of remedying a medical condition. In such cases, the very existence of an illness is itself a matter of some contention to be interactionally worked out. And it is perhaps both predictable and symptomatic that those explicitly denying (or as with the granddaughter, indirectly failing to admit) that problematic health behaviors exist, also somehow let it be made known that far too much attention is being given to possibilities and consequences of illness in the first instance. Implications of this investigation extend well beyond "bulimia" and "grandparent caregiving" to a vast array of casual and institutional involvements between family members, friends, and bureaucratic representatives such as those involved in long-term caregiving, dealing with cancer and Alzheimer's disease, or conducting psychiatric interviews and HIV/AIDS counseling sessions. Findings regarding the interactionally organized nature of talk about bulimia, as well as the problematic nature of caregiving, will be of value to researchers focusing on language and social interaction, health practitioners, and families alike. This volume includes the full transcript of the conversation in the case study. A copy of the audio-recording is available for classroom adoption and/or personal purchase by contacting: Wayne A. Beach, School of Communication, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA 92182-4516.

Author: Anatole Broyard
Publisher: Fawcett
ISBN: 0449908348
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 158

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Book Description
Anatole Broyard, long-time book critic, book review editor, and essayist for the New York Times, wants to be remembered. He will be, with this collection of irreverent, humorous essays he wrote concerning the ordeals of life and death—many of which were written during the battle with cancer that led to his death in 1990. A New York Times Notable Book of the Year “A heartbreakingly eloquent and unsentimental meditation on mortality . . . Some writing is so rich and well-spoken that commentary is superfluous, even presumptuous. . . . Read this book, and celebrate a cultured spirit made fine, it seems, by the coldest of touches.”—Los Angeles Times “Succeeds brilliantly . . . Anatole Broyard has joined his father but not before leaving behind a legacy rich in wisdom about the written word and the human condition. He has died. But he lives as a writer and we are the wealthier for it.”—The Washington Post Book World “A virtuoso performance . . . The central essays of Intoxicated By My Illness were written during the last fourteen months of Broyard’s life. They are held in a gracious setting of his previous writings on death in life and literature, including a fictionalized account of his own father’s dying of cancer. The title refers to his reaction to the knowledge that he had a life-threatening illness. His literary sensibility was ignited, his mind flooded with image and metaphor, and he decided to employ these intuitive gifts to light his way into the darkness of his disease and its treatment. . . . Many other people have chronicled their last months . . . Few are as vivid as Broyard, who brilliantly surveys a variety of books on illness and death along the way as he draws us into his writer’s imagination, set free now by what he describes as the deadline of life. . . . [A] remarkable book, a lively man of dense intelligence and flashing wit who lets go and yet at the same time comtains himself in the style through which he remains alive.”—The New York Times Book Review “Despite much pain, Anatole Broyard continued to write until the final days of his life. He used his writing to rage, in the words of Dylan Thomas, against the dying of the light. . . . Shocking, no-holds-barred and utterly exquisite.”—The Baltimore Sun

Author: Michael Stein
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019751040X
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
A POLITICAL PROVOCATION FROM A PAIR OF PHYSICIANS WRITING OUTSIDE THEIR LANE Americans care about their health. Americans pay lots of money in hopes of maintaining their health. So why are Americans so unhealthy? The reason is simple: as a country, the United States overinvests in medical care at the expense of the social, economic, and cultural forces that produce health. The rise of medicine as a cornerstone of American life and culture has coincided with a social and political devaluation of factors demonstrated to mean more to our vitality than anything else -- influences like where we live, work, and play; livable wages that create opportunity for healthy living; and gender and racial equity. In Pained, physicians Michael Stein and Sandro Galea push the conversation around American health where it belongs: toward matters of class, money, and culture. Across more than 50 essays and data illustrations, Pained casts a light on how the structural components of everyday life -- like school, housing, police, even cell phones -- ultimately determine who gets to be healthy in today's America. In doing so, it makes a case for reframing our political discourse in less myopic, more effectual terms. Accessible and surprising, political but not partisan, Pained is the urgent, uncomfortable conversation that American needs in this challenging moment. It will delight and infuriate readers of all political stripes.

Author: Joseph Grenny
Publisher: McGraw Hill Professional
ISBN: 1260474194
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
Keep your cool and get the results you want when faced with crucial conversations. This New York Times bestseller and business classic has been fully updated for a world where skilled communication is more important than ever. The book that revolutionized business communications has been updated for today’s workplace. Crucial Conversations provides powerful skills to ensure every conversation—especially difficult ones—leads to the results you want. Written in an engaging and witty style, the book teaches readers how to be persuasive rather than abrasive, how to get back to productive dialogue when others blow up or clam up, and it offers powerful skills for mastering high-stakes conversations, regardless of the topic or person. This new edition addresses issues that have arisen in recent years. You’ll learn how to: Respond when someone initiates a crucial conversation with you Identify and address the lag time between identifying a problem and discussing it Communicate more effectively across digital mediums When stakes are high, opinions vary, and emotions run strong, you have three choices: Avoid a crucial conversation and suffer the consequences; handle the conversation poorly and suffer the consequences; or apply the lessons and strategies of Crucial Conversations and improve relationships and results. Whether they take place at work or at home, with your coworkers or your spouse, crucial conversations have a profound impact on your career, your happiness, and your future. With the skills you learn in this book, you'll never have to worry about the outcome of a crucial conversation again.

Author: Richard McQuellon
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199750785
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
Every day, thousands of people receive a diagnosis of serious, life-threatening illness, and their families and friends suddenly become caregivers. Despite the best of intentions it is not always easy to communicate well under these circumstances, or find deep empathy for something one has never before experienced. When is it best to speak, and when to be silent? How can someone provide real comfort, and how can relationships with loved ones facing serious illness be enhanced in this most difficult time? This book is about how to be an encouraging caregiver and friend under the most difficult circumstances, when the possibility of death is all too real The authors believe that open dialogue must not be avoided until the last minute when opportunities will be limited, but that caregivers and loved ones can embrace this time, mortal time, honestly as a way to sensitively and compassionately engage with those for whom a central fact of life is realized--that all of our lives are time-limited. In The Art of Conversation Through Serious Illness, the authors consider how to best listen to and speak with one facing life-threatening illness, with lessons on being a primary conversation partner, becoming properly empathic and receiving empathy, maintaining everyday conversation, using platitudes appropriately, understanding healthy denial, and talking about dying. Offering bedside guidance usually only available to professionals and peppered with insightful anecdotes from the authors' own experiences, this gentle, succinct book is appropriate for anyone going through this uniquely difficult yet universal life experience.

Author: Sandro Galea
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190916842
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
"A deeply affecting work from one of the important and innovative voices in American health and medicine." -- Arianna Huffington In Well, physician Sandro Galea examines what Americans miss when they fixate on healthcare: health. Americans spend more money on health than people anywhere else in the world. And what do they get for it? Statistically, not much. Americans today live shorter, less healthy lives than citizens of other rich countries, and these trends show no signs of letting up. The problem, Sandro Galea argues, is that Americans focus on the wrong things when they think about health. Our national understanding of what constitutes "being well" is centered on medicine -- the lifestyles we adopt to stay healthy, and the insurance plans and prescriptions we fall back on when we're not. While all these things are important, they've not proven to be the difference between healthy and unhealthy on the large scale. Well is a radical examination of the subtle and not-so-subtle factors that determine who gets to be healthy in America. Galea shows how the country's failing health is a product of American history and character -- and how refocusing on our national health can usher enlightenment across American life and politics.

Author: Dennis Rosen
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231164440
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
The health-care system in the United States is by far the most expensive in the world, yet its outcomes are decidedly mediocre in comparison to those of other countries. Poor communication between doctors and patients, Dennis Rosen argues, is at the heart of this disparity, a pervasive problem that damages not only the well-being of the patient but also the integrity of the health-care system and society as a whole. Drawing upon research in biomedicine, sociology, and anthropology and integrating personal stories from his medical practice in three different countries (and as a patient), Rosen shows how important good communication between physicians and patients is to the provision of high-qualityÑand less-expensiveÑcare. Without it, treatment adherence and preventive services decline, and the rates of medical complications, hospital readmissions, and unnecessary testing and procedures rise. Rosen illustrates the consequences of these problems from both the caregiver and patient perspectives and explores the socioeconomic and cultural factors that cause important information to be literally lost in translation. He concludes with a prescriptive chapter for patients and physicians aimed at building the cultural competencies and communications skills necessary for higher-quality, less-expensive care, making medicine more satisfying for all involved.

Author: Mary I. Carson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Bad news
Languages : en
Pages : 159

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Book Description
Talking about illness is not easy. Despite recent medical advancements, diagnosis of a serious illness still comes crashing into our world and turns our lives upside down. So we turn to each other for support. "Healthy" conversations can help reduce anxiety and increase levels of hope, but those types of conversations do not happen easily. We need to learn how to better say it like it is. A body of communication theory called "General Semantics" can help us better respond to these challenges. It offers us ways to choose our words wisely to better insure shared meaning, and it reminds us how the verbal "maps" we create and share with others affects the ways we think and behave. It's so easy for us to literally talk ourselves into negative feelings and overall despair. But it does not have to be that way. Discussion strategies housed within this book can help us better say what we mean, which, in turn, can help us face our illness challenges with less anxiety and renewed hope. - from back cover.

Author: Elena Lister, M.D.
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593419162
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
The best and only resource you will ever need for helping any child understand and cope with illness, death, and loss Just as death is inevitable, talking about death is an inevitable part of parenting. Dr. Elena Lister and Dr. Michael Schwartzman offer us the way to have conversations with children that are as much about life as they are about death—conversations that anyone who parents, teaches, or counsels children can have. Giving Hope is a must-have resource that expands our understanding of how to prepare for, initiate, and facilitate these personal and profound conversations. The approach is honest, practical, and compassionate and will benefit a grieving child both now and in the future. Giving Hope provides us with the tools to make our children’s experiences positive and life-affirming.