Family Meetings are often more daunting than seeing a patient alone, but are an essential feature of good holistic care.
Vital Talk's family conference video outlines a clinician's guide to approaching family meetings when patients who have a serious illness are not able to participate.
There are 7 steps:
- Pre-meet: Make sure your team have met together first, shared what you know about the family and have agreed key points
- Introduce: Hold the conference in a place that affords privacy, give introductions and explain the purpose of the meeting
- Assess: Assess the families perspective so that you can build a shared understanding
- Update: Give information in parts rather than one long lecture. Use language they can understand. Pause to allow questions. Finish with the big picture.
- Empathise: Acknowledging an emotion often allows people to feel understood.
- Prioritise: Try to elicit the patients values. ''Could you tell me about him as a person? What is important to him? What would he want now?'' Asking a family to put themselves in the patient's shoes if often easier for them than asking them to make a difficult decision.
- Align: Align the medical care plan with the patient's values and the reality of the medical situation. You can offer to make a recommendation based on the medical situation and the patients values.
Apps to consider
The VitalTalk Tips App is an invaluable app that will build your 'communication superpowers'!