Paliatívna medicína a liečba bolesti 3/2011

Clinician´s communication skills about death and dying in care with patiens those impend the death

Requirements physician, who works with dying people are high: these are not only medical knowledge, but also communication skills, providing support and his/her personality. The physician should be flexible, with high toleration to stress at the same time with sensibly healthy self-confidence, be able to communicate with team and be able quickly to form with the patient relationship based on the confidence. He/she should be also emphatic enough, specially educated in work with suffering, pain, dying and the death, be able to cope with mystery, ambiquity, unclarity and humanly in his/her profession growth. Generally are this findings valid for all members of palliative team. That is why we would like in that article to emphasize how much is important that the physician can understand psychological problems linked to the death and dying, in terms of support can work with spirituality, is able to communicate with patient, alone already experienced death confrontation techniques and can prevent burn-out syndrom. The article supports case-reports from the perspectives of patients, families and health care co-workers.

Keywords: dying, pain, spirituality, communication, respite care.