Communication Skills to Improve Quality-of-Life Decision-Making for Patients with Serious Illnesses

Activity Summary

Nurses experience distress when they feel patients are suffering and their death may be being prolonged. Nurses are pivotal in patient and family communication, especially about making the link between the medical condition and the patient’s values and definition of quality of life. This session improves communication skills through teaching evidence-based, practical phrases and tools to help patients and families explore their beliefs/values and how this translates into goals of care and appropriate medical treatment that honors a patient’s values and goals.

Objectives

Describe how to bridge a patient’s medical condition with their values and goals of care and how this decreases distress.
Identify phrases to use when exploring patients’ and families’ values, cultural beliefs, and goals of care.
Apply communication tools to facilitate communication with patients and families to help them address difficult decisions.

Continuing Education Disclosure Statement

Criteria for Awarding Contact Hours

Learners must complete the entire activity and the associated evaluation AND read Implicit Bias impacts patient outcomes. No partial credit will be awarded.

Accreditation

American Association of Critical-Care Nurses is accredited as a provider of nursing continuing professional development by the American Nurses Credentialing Center's Commission on Accreditation.
Provider approved by the California Board of Registered Nursing, Provider number CEP 1036, for {contactHours} contact hours.

Disclosures

The Nurse Planner has determined that no individuals with the ability to control content of this activity have relevant relationships with ineligible companies.

Activities with pharmacotherapeutic credit are to assist the APRN in fulfilling their education requirements for licensure and certification renewals.

Refund Policy

Continuing Education Activities are nonrefundable.