improving doctor-patient communication

It is of obvious importance for health-care providers to communicate well with patients and their family members. The ONCOTALK faculty at the University of Washington offer a series of teaching modules that are designed to help doctors do just that. Downloadable videos available.

Effectively conveying bad news to patients is particularly important in practicing cancer medicine. In the above video, faculty at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine teach residents how to do this through role playing exercises. The late Robert Buckman, MD, PhD, was instrumental in developing instruction about bad news delivery (see his SPIKE video), as well as about communication sensitivity in general (see a collection of Buckman videos on MD Anderson's Clinical Communication Skills page).