title: EM Talk: communication skills training for emergency medicine patients with serious illness.
abstract: The emergency department visit for a patient with serious illness represents a sentinel event, signalling a change in the illness trajectory. By better understanding patient and family wishes, emergency physicians can reinforce advance care plans and ensure the hospital care provided matches the patient's values. Despite their importance in care at the end of life, emergency physicians have received little training on how to talk to seriously ill patients and their families about goals of care. To expand communication skills training to emergency medicine, we developed a programme to give emergency medicine physicians the ability to empathically deliver serious news and to talk about goals of care. We have built on lessons from prior studies to design an intervention employing the most effective pedagogical techniques, including the use of simulated patients/families, role-playing and small group learning with constructive feedback from master clinicians. Here, we describe our evidence-based communication skills training course EM Talk using simulation, reflective feedback and deliberate practice.
authors.affiliation: Ronald O Perelman Department of Emergency Medicine and Population Health, New York University School of Medicine, New York, New York, USA.
authors.forename: Corita R
authors.initials: CR
authors.lastname: Grudzen
authors.affiliation: Department of Critical Care Medicine and Emergency Medicine, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.
authors.forename: Lillian L
authors.initials: LL
authors.lastname: Emlet
authors.affiliation: Department of Traumatology and Emergency Medicine, University of Connecticut Health Center, Farmington, Connecticut, USA.
authors.forename: Joanne
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kuntz
authors.affiliation: Department of Emergency Medicine, Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York, New York, USA.
authors.forename: Ashley
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Shreves
authors.affiliation: Department of Emergency Medicine, Henry Ford Health System, Detroit, Michigan, USA.
authors.forename: Erin
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Zimny
authors.affiliation: Ronald O Perelman Department of Emergency Medicine and Population Health, New York University School of Medicine, New York, New York, USA.
authors.forename: Maureen
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Gang
authors.affiliation: Department of Emergency Medicine, Kaiser Permanente Health System, San Francisco, California, USA.
authors.forename: Monique
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Schaulis
authors.affiliation: Department of Emergency Medicine, Kaiser Permanente, San Raphael, California, USA.
authors.forename: Scott
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Schmidt
authors.affiliation: Department of Emergency Medicine, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California, USA.
authors.forename: Eric
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Isaacs
authors.affiliation: Department of Medicine, Division of General Internal Medicine, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.
authors.forename: Robert
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Arnold
mesh_terms: D032722:Advance Care Planning; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D004635:Emergency Medicine / Q000193:education*; D019317:Evidence-Based Medicine; D005260:Female; D058015:Health Communication / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D016544:Patient Simulation; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D013727:Terminal Care / Q000379:methods*
keywords: Communication; Education and training