Sage Palliative Medicine & Chronic Care

This episode features Dr Joyce Chung and Weilin Chen (School of Nursing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR, China). What is already known about the topic: End-of-life communication can improve patients’ quality of life, ease the bereavement experience, raise care satisfaction and reduce the utilisation of aggressive and expensive medical care. Healthcare professionals’ perceived barriers, such as fear of causing distress, impede the delivery of end-of-life conversations in a professional, sensitive and appropriate manner. The communication strategies available to healthcare professionals for discussing end-of-life issues with terminally ill patients and their families have not yet been systematically summarised. What this paper adds: This review systematically examines, summarises and presents recommended end-of-life communication strategies for healthcare professionals. It organises these communication strategies into seven themes that should be considered when deliv