The Arc of Conversation A Howto Guide for Goals of Care Conversations

Intending to fill an important gap in medical training, this book presents an easy-to-learn, standardized approach to having compassionate and collaborative goals of careconversations with patients and families, a skill that can be difficult for clinicians to learn and that is not part of standard medical education curricula. Developed by a Palliative Care provider, this is the first book to teach everything clinicians need to know to gently guide patients and families through what can often bedifficult discussions about illness, disease, end-of-life wishes, and hospice care. This technique can be used to discuss any medical diagnosis or treatment, be employed atany age or stage of an illness, and can be used by health care professionals at any level. Readers will be introduced to the patterns of decline patients follow toward the end of life, criteria for recognizing when a patient¿s time is limited, hospice care, groundrules for compassionate communication, and a step-wise method of