Sage Palliative Medicine & Chronic Care

This episode features Rebecca Anderson (Marie Curie Palliative Care Research Department,  University College London, London, UK).  Poor communication from healthcare professionals is a common complaint from relatives of patients at the end-of-life. Communication with relatives at this time is important for high quality end-of-life care and for relatives’ long-term well-being. Common communication strategies are identified including highlighting the patient’s deterioration to aid decision-making, references to patient wishes, providing relatives with options, tailoring information to individuals and using pacing and staging of information. Healthcare professionals state a belief in using honest, direct language and involving families in decision-making, but there is variation in the extent to which this is implemented in practice. Nurses and allied healthcare professionals play an important role in providing individualized communication with relatives. There is a need for more research on communication with re