Teaching how to communicate bad news in medicine. An experience in our Hospital

Abstract

The ability of how to communicate bad news needs to be taught as any medical technique. It is important to underline that this task must be performed taking into account the following aspects: the physician´s right to inform, the patient´s right to not be informed, the evaluation of patient´s emotional and information states before talking to them, as well as offering always a solving treatment (either healing or palliative) to the patient. In this article, it is also presented the experience of teaching this skill at the Pediatric Department of Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires