How to Break Bad News: A Guide for Health Care Professionals

by Robert Buckman and Yvonne Kason

Book Overview

Based on Buckman's award-winning training videos and Kason's courses on interviewing skills for medical students, this volume is an indispensable aid for doctors, nurses, psychotherapists, social workers, and all those in related fields.

For many health care professionals and social service providers, the hardest part of the job is breaking bad news. The news may be about a condition that is life-threatening (such as cancer or AIDS),...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0801844916
• ISBN13: 9780801844911
• Release Date: July 1992
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.77 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Outstanding resouce

I am a psychololgist. I read this book very carefully and outlined it, it was that good. It is very practical information on how to deliver difficult news. I found that I deliver more difficult news than I thought. I use the six steps outlined in the book now, and teach residents about the book. This is the best resouce I found for delivering bad news to patients.

Ground Breaking

How to Break Bad News is one of the best books on the subject I've found anywhere. I wrote a book called "Difficult Conversations" which deals with some of the same issues in a broader context, and I am impressed indeed by Buckman's book. I wish healthcare workers everywhere would read it.

great ice breaker

This is chock full of great advice when you don't know what to say, or are feeling slightly shy or uncomfortable. Just curling up with these study cases in how to tell someone their colon is infecting their entire body and they only have a few weeks to live, or that a hemorrhage in their daughters brain will keep her in a state of vegetation for the rest of her ... life is enough to make anyone feel better about their own situation. Not sure what to say at a party? Just imagine yourself in one of these terrible situations and you'll thankfully be chatting up a storm.

A fantastic "how-to" guide on a difficult topic

I first came across a reference to this book in a medical ethics class. After watching an attending physician take the wrong tack in explaining a terminal condition, I decided to learn a better way. This book has excellent summaries, frequent examples of the "wrong" way and the "right" way, and is the single best book on talking to patients I've read. A must-read for any health care provider, and especially anyone who has to talk to critically ill patients or their families.