Like any procedure in medicine, prognosis communication is a skill that can be taught and practiced. Unfortunately, most clinicians receive no formal training in how to communicate prognosis. Now there's a new set of teaching tools to help clinicians learn prognosis communication.
With a Beeson Scholars/Hartford Change AGEnts Action Award, a subgrant of the The Paul B. Beeson Emerging Leaders Career Development Award in Aging funded by AFAR and the John A Hartford Foundation, a group of clinicians has developed a set of teaching videos and key take home communication pointers. Clinicians supported by this initiative include 3 Beeson Scholars, Alexander Smith, MD (2012), Mara Schonberg, MD (2009), and Sei Lee, MD (2011), as well as COE Fellows Eric Widera, MD (2010-11), and Nancy Shoenborn, MD (2015).
Like any procedure in medicine, prognosis communication is a skill that can be taught and practiced. Unfortunately, most clinicians receive no formal training in how to communicate prognosis. Now there's a new set of teaching tools to help clinicians learn prognosis communication.
The new teaching videos are built into to a redesign of the website ePrognosis.org, a free site dedicated to improving the use of prognosis in clinical decision making for older adults. The new teaching videos are bundled in a new section titled ePrognosis: Communication.
An April 11, 2016 article in JAMA Internal Medicine by Dr. Schoenborn and Beeson scholar Cynthia Boyd, MD (2009), found that primary care providers rarely discuss long term prognosis with their patients. In an accompanying editorial, Drs. Schonberg and Smith point to the new teaching videos on ePrognosis.org as a way to overcome primary care providers' reticence to engage older adult patients in prognosis discussions. Drs. Schoenborn and Boyd's article "Primary Care Practitioners’ Views on Incorporating Long-term Prognosis in the Care of Older Adults" can be viewed here and Drs. Schonberg and Smith's commentary can be found here.
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