AIM The aim of this study was to understand staff perceptions of the role of the hospital palliative care team and to identify knowledge and confidence levels of general staff caring for patients with palliative care needs. METHOD A survey questionnaire tool was used with a response rate of 51 per cent. Participants included nurses, health care assistants and doctors. RESULTS The study high...

In every medical specialty bad, sad, and difficult information must be given to patients and their families. An insensitive approach increases the distress of recipients of bad news, may exert a lasting impact on their ability to adapt and adjust, and can lead to anger and an increased risk of litigation. Many doctors also find these interactions stressful, and in the absence of much effective ...

Studies show that pre-game content that is customized to fit a player could lead to better learning than a fixed sequence of worked examples and problem solving. A scenario is a description of a series of interactions between a player and a virtual character for one-to-one communication skills training, where at each step the player is faced with a choice between statements. A communication ski...

BACKGROUND Since 2012, all GP practices across Scotland have been supported to take a systematic approach to end-of-life care, by helping them to identify more patients for palliative care through a Palliative Care Directed Enhanced Service (DES). We aimed to understand the impact of this initiative. METHODS Routine quantitative data from the 2012/13, and 2013/14 DES were collected from regio...

Current teaching approaches in human and veterinary medicine across North America, Europe, and Australia include lectures, group discussions, feedback, role-play, and web-based training. Increasing class sizes, changing learning preferences, and economic and logistical challenges are influencing the design and delivery of communication skills in veterinary undergraduate education. The study's o...

BACKGROUND Diabetes is the third most common chronic condition in childhood and poor glycaemic control leads to serious short-term and life-limiting long-term complications. In addition to optimal medical management, it is widely recognised that psychosocial and educational factors play a key role in improving outcomes for young people with diabetes. Recent systematic reviews of psycho-educatio...

This paper describes how our FILTWAM software artifacts for face and voice emotion recognition will be used for assessing learners' progress and providing adequate feedback in an online game-based communication skills training. This constitutes an example of in-game assessment for mainly formative purposes. During this training, learners are requested to mimic specific emotions via a webcam and...

OBJECTIVE A systematic review was conducted in order to explore the effectiveness of communication-skills training interventions in end-of-life care with noncancer acute-based healthcare staff. METHOD Articles were included if they (1) focused on communication-skills training in end-of-life/palliative care for noncancer acute-based staff and (2) reported an outcome related to behavior change ...

OBJECTIVE To review trials of the effectiveness of interventions aimed at improving communication between health professionals and women in maternity care. SEARCH STRATEGY The electronic databases Medline, PsycLit, The Cochrane Library, BIDS Science and Social Science Indexes, Cinahl and Embase were searched. Final searches were carried out in April 2000. INCLUSION CRITERIA Controlled trial...