About this course
This course teaches hospice aides, nurses, social workers, chaplains, schedulers and on-call staff how to communicate with each other, so that what one person learns at a bedside becomes something the whole interdisciplinary group can act on. It is the team-facing companion to bedside communication with patients and families. Part one establishes why this is the highest-stakes training a hospice can run: care planning under 42 CFR 418.56 is the single most frequently cited hospice deficiency nationally, and most of what gets cited is a communication failure rather than a clinical one. Part two covers the interdisciplinary group itself: who must be on it, what the designated RN coordinator does, what a surveyor watches for during an IDG meeting, and what a genuinely useful contribution sounds like from an aide, a nurse, a social worker and a chaplain. Part three teaches the mechanics of transfer: SBAR for the call that needs a decision, the five elements of a real handoff, on-call and after-hours escalation, and documentation written so the next person can act on it. Part four covers the attending physician, and the facility setting, where a patient in a SNF, NF or ICF/IID is served by two staffs at once under 418.112. Part five covers conflict between disciplines, and keeping the patient and family inside the conversation as 418.52 and 418.56 require. Suitable for new-hire orientation, annual in-service, and remediation after a care planning or coordination of services citation.