Delivering Serious News
In this course, you’ll learn how to improve your communication skills and connect more deeply with your patients.
Delivering Serious News
5 hours?
5 CME credits
Open Enrollment?
Self-paced online
Learners have 8 weeks of course access
$205
What other clinicians say
“This is an unintimidating course to help craft your communication skills when the news is bad and emotions are high. If role playing exercises under observation stress you out, this course is for you!”
At the conclusion of this course, clinicians will be able to:
- Recognize emotional cues that patients commonly give in discussions about serious news.
- Respond to patient and family emotions with empathic statements.
- Provide information in an individualized way.
- Distribute parts of the serious news conversation with colleagues.
A different kind of course
This course is built around a story in which you play a key role–a communication coach helping (fictional) clinicians working with seriously ill patients in a medical facility. Clinicians seek advice on how to deliver serious news more effectively. Your job is to watch them in action and advise them on how they can do better. If you need help along the way, you can investigate the rich collection of available learning resources!
Task structure
This highly interactive course is divided into a series of 15 tasks, each of which you should plan on spending approximately 20-30 minutes to complete, for a total of about 6 hours.
The course is designed for you to seek out learning resources proactively, whenever during each task you’re most curious to learn. We encourage you to spend time with these resources to help you do better on your task assignments, and more importantly, to help you improve in your real world practice.
Take your communication skills from good to great can have a bigger impact than you think.
Accreditation Statement
This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the accreditation requirements and policies of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) through the joint providership of the Washington State Medical Association (WSMA) and VitalTalk. The WSMA is accredited by the ACCME to provide continuing medical education for physicians.
The WSMA designates this Other activity (Enduring materials and practice conversations) for a maximum of 5 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.