Publications by authors named "A H Lawton"

Mentoring is crucial to professional success, but little is known about the professional development needs of mid-career hospice and palliative medicine (HPM) clinicians. An interprofessional "friendtor" group of five HPM clinicians from three academic medical centers met monthly and for a year-end focus group. A thematic analysis was used to develop a coding structure and identify overarching themes from these discussions.

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Article Synopsis
  • Pediatric cardiology fellows often need to communicate serious news to families and effective communication is vital for building relationships and improving health outcomes.
  • A 3-hour training session using VitalTalk methodology focused on teaching fellows how to deliver difficult news and handle emotional responses, including role play with actors to practice skills.
  • After the training, all 9 participating fellows reported enhanced preparedness and comfort in discussing challenging topics related to pediatric cardiology, such as new congenital heart disease diagnoses and poor prognoses.
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Therapeutic clinical relationships and skilled communication are foundational elements of high-quality hospice and palliative care. Both require that we draw on the most valuable, yet limited, resource in our practice: clinician time. As the demand for serious illness care continues to outpace the supply of trained palliative care clinicians, we must consider time-efficiency as a key component of clinical effectiveness.

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