Interpreting Difficult Conversations-Evaluating How to Support Medical Interpreters in the Delivery of Serious News.

Despite their essential role in language concordant patient care, medical interpreters do not routinely receive training focused on difficult conversations and may not feel comfortable interpreting these encounters. Previous studies, while acknowledging the need for increased support, have provided limited strategies targeted at enhancing interpreter training and improving interpreter comfort levels in difficult conversations. Fifty-seven in-person medical interpreters providing services at our quaternary and community hospitals completed a 21-question mixed-methods survey regarding their comfort levels and experiences surrounding serious illness conversations.

Palliative Care Approach to Chronic Diseases: End Stages of Heart Failure, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, Liver Failure, and Renal Failure.

Management of chronic diseases is often palliative by definition. Empowering primary care providers to manage symptoms and effectively prognosticate is necessary for this challenging population. In this article, the authors focus specifically on end-stage congestive heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, end-stage kidney disease, and end-stage liver disease and how palliative principles can guide decision making and symptom management in these disease states.

Enhancing learning through an interprofessional project competition.

This article describes the process of using an interprofessional team project to address one of the most commonly occurring challenges in health care delivery--medication reconciliation. We describe the planning and execution of the process and the lessons learned from the experience. The intent of this article is to document the significance of each process and the importance of each member involved in the process, and to act as a guideline for institutions planning similar interprofessional team project experiences for students.