In groups of 8-10, students have the opportunity to participate in an exercise on the communication of a death notification.
Thus, donor centres should develop policies regarding communication of recipients' deaths to their donors.
This ideology involves an open awareness of dying, open communication, a gradual acceptance of death and settling of both practical and "interpersonal business".
Yet too many people suffer unnecessary pain and distress and there are major impediments to good end of life care.[ 4, 5] In fact, a large study[ 6] of seriously ill hospitalized patients documented substantial shortcomings in communication, treatment, and characteristics of death.
We analyzed results on a per-patient basis to represent documented communication as a process up to the time of death with the exception of communication characteristics section for which the results are reported per communication.
However, many of these will overlap, and so the real figure for the number of discrete social networks involved in communication of news of a death, taking into account Facebook, texting, and other networking tools, is likely to be smaller.
The goal of the intervention is to impact on (1) communication, (2) care, QOL and quality of death and (3) satisfaction outcomes.
With funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the RCT will assess the efficacy of the TOC communication tool for reducing the endpoint of death or hospital readmission at 3 months.
We plan to publish the main trial outcomes related to communication and satisfaction in a single paper, with additional papers exploring the impact of the intervention and any changes in communication on care, QOL and quality of death.
Emebet Wuhib-Mutungi looks at what's killing teenagers around the world and outlines how communication can help address the main causes of death.
