Care Plans: Helping Family Understand Decline in a Patient

Presented by Joy Goldsmith and Elaine Wittenberg

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Video Runtime: 13 Minutes

This series provides communication strategies to enable providers and professionals in hospice and palliative care, as well as those working with patients with chronic and complex illnesses, to experience empowered communication with family caregivers. The chapters will offer basic tools to support communication with family caregivers and include resources to utilize as a patient’s condition changes. Interaction tools for difficult exchanges within family systems, pathways to discuss patient decline, and communication to reduce family grief are additional chapters in this offering. As the stress of family members can increase in relation to illness, providers and professionals need communication scaffolding that provides a pathway to connect even when conflict and grief are high.

Meet your instructors

Smiling woman with gray shoulder-length hair in a dark pink shirt stands against white, representing confidence in hybrid care solutions.

Joy Goldsmith

Joy Goldsmith, PhD, conducts research about health communication science in the context of healthcare provider training and serious and chronic illness. CommunicateComfort.com, a longtime initiative of Dr. Goldsmith, offers a range of research interventions and education/training curricula for healthcare providers. Storyboard…

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A smiling woman with curly gray hair and an orange top stands against a white background, embodying medbridge's approachability.

Elaine Wittenberg

Elaine Wittenberg holds a PhD in communication from the University of Oklahoma and has authored more than 150 peer-reviewed articles on hospice and palliative care communication. She is coauthor of seven books pertaining to palliative care, family communication, and nursing, three of which have been awarded Book of the Year…

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Chapters & learning objectives

1. Understanding Patient Decline

This microlearning course summarizes the tension experienced by many healthcare providers when a family member becomes frustrated when pursuing patient care. Many family members have either not been included in information about patient decline or not yet accepted patient diagnosis or prognosis. Recognizing this tension and communicating key topics to achieve shared meaning can increase understanding and improve communication.