WS 11 - Communication with your patient: how to announce bad news?

Communication experts will share tools to inform your patient correctly with empathy about bad diagnosis or prognosis. They will coach in an interactive way starting from clinical practice. We have all experienced the difficulty and sometimes akwardness of delivering sensitive messages and bad news to patients. For a doctor, all in a days’work, for the patient it can mean he has to change his whole outlook on life. These messages always have an emotional impact and are deep-felt moments for the person on the receiving end. This workshop aims at raising awareness and heightening communicative skills of the specialist when delivering bad news or sensitive messages to his patient. The workshop uses the actual experiences of the participants as the raw material. The sensitive confrontations between doctor and patient are immediately put into scene with the help of a « patient-actor ». Participants receive direct feedback from « patient », trainer and colleagues. To do’s and don’ts are then added, together with theoretical references. An optimum combination of message-content and the way the message is delivered is our goal.