Breaking Bad News Using Role Playing: A Multimedia Instructional Activity for Teaching Medical Trainees

Breaking bad news.

Breaking Bad News

Even the most skilled physician knows that conveying bad news to a patient or family can be one of the most arduous aspects of health care. Historically, breaking bad news is a skill that has generally been under-emphasized in training programmes. Critical care physicians are commonly faced with the difficult task of breaking bad news, often in dramatic, emotional and unexpected situations. Bre...

Breaking bad news – an interdisciplinary curricular teaching-concept

BACKGROUND The concerns of patients suffering from life-threatening disease and end-of-life care aspects have gained increasing attention in public perception. The increasing focus on palliative medicine questions can be considered to be paradigmatic for this development. Palliative medicine became a compulsory subject of the undergraduate curriculum in Germany to be implemented until 2013. The...

Barriers to breaking bad news among medical and surgical residents.

UNLABELLED Communicating "bad news" to patients and their families can be difficult for physicians. OBJECTIVE This qualitative study aimed to examine residents' perceptions of barriers to delivering bad news to patients and their family members. DESIGN Two focus groups consisting of first- and second-year medical and surgical residents were conducted to explore residents' perceptions of the...

Breaking bad news concerning fertility.

Introduction The subject for this opinion paper is breaking bad news, a complex and integral part in the area of infertility. From the couple’s point of view, involuntary childlessness is not a question of once receiving bad news but repeatedly receiving bad news during the infertility investigation and treatment. Already before seeking medical attention, the couple will have had monthly bad ne...