About this course
This course teaches bedside communication with hospice patients and the families in the room. It is deliberately practical, and it is about the patient side of communication rather than team handoffs. Part one sets the ground rules: what a hospice aide can answer, what belongs to the registered nurse, and how to open a visit so that an adult is treated as an adult. Part two teaches the core moves: Ask-Tell-Ask, Tell Me More, the NURSE responses to emotion, and the deliberate use of silence. Part three works through communication with patients whose ability to receive or produce speech is impaired: confusion and delirium, sedation and reduced consciousness, aphasia, hearing and vision loss, and patients who are non-verbal, including how to read behavior as communication. Part four handles the hard questions, beginning with 'Am I dying?', and covers prognosis questions, requests to keep secrets from the family or the team, and how to respond when a family asks you something that belongs to the nurse. Part five covers talking to families who are in the room, professional interpreters and language access, and how to get what you heard to the person who can act on it. Suitable for hospice aide orientation, annual in-service training, and for any staff member who speaks with patients and families.