The Art of Conversation Through Serious Illness

The Art of Conversation Through Serious Illness
Author: Richard McQuellon
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 162
Release: 2010-04-29
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0199752869

Every day, thousands of people receive a diagnosis of serious, life-threatening illness, and their families and friends suddenly become caregivers. Despite the best of intentions it is not always easy to communicate well under these circumstances, or find deep empathy for something one has never before experienced. When is it best to speak, and when to be silent? How can someone provide real comfort, and how can relationships with loved ones facing serious illness be enhanced in this most difficult time? This book is about how to be an encouraging caregiver and friend under the most difficult circumstances, when the possibility of death is all too real The authors believe that open dialogue must not be avoided until the last minute when opportunities will be limited, but that caregivers and loved ones can embrace this time, mortal time, honestly as a way to sensitively and compassionately engage with those for whom a central fact of life is realized--that all of our lives are time-limited. In The Art of Conversation Through Serious Illness, the authors consider how to best listen to and speak with one facing life-threatening illness, with lessons on being a primary conversation partner, becoming properly empathic and receiving empathy, maintaining everyday conversation, using platitudes appropriately, understanding healthy denial, and talking about dying. Offering bedside guidance usually only available to professionals and peppered with insightful anecdotes from the authors' own experiences, this gentle, succinct book is appropriate for anyone going through this uniquely difficult yet universal life experience.

The Art of Conversation Through Serious Illness:Lessons for Caregivers

The Art of Conversation Through Serious Illness:Lessons for Caregivers
Author: Richard McQuellon
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2010-04-29
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 9780195389227

Every day, thousands of people receive a diagnosis of serious, life-threatening illness, and their families and friends suddenly become caregivers. Despite the best of intentions it is not always easy to communicate well under these circumstances, or find deep empathy for something one has never before experienced. When is it best to speak, and when to be silent? How can someone provide real comfort, and how can relationships with loved ones facing serious illness be enhanced in this most difficult time?This book is about how to be an encouraging caregiver and friend under the most difficult circumstances, when the possibility of death is all too real The authors believe that open dialogue must not be avoided until the last minute when opportunities will be limited, but that caregivers and loved ones can embrace this time, mortal time, honestly as a way to sensitively and compassionately engage with those for whom a central fact of life is realized--that all of our lives are time-limited.In The Art of Conversation Through Serious Illness, the authors consider how to best listen to and speak with one facing life-threatening illness, with lessons on being a primary conversation partner, becoming properly empathic and receiving empathy, maintaining everyday conversation, using platitudes appropriately, understanding healthy denial, and talking about dying. Offering bedside guidance usually only available to professionals and peppered with insightful anecdotes from the authors' own experiences, this gentle, succinct book is appropriate for anyone going through this uniquely difficult yet universal life experience.

The Art of Dying Well

The Art of Dying Well
Author: Katy Butler
Publisher: Scribner
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2020-02-11
Genre: Self-Help
ISBN: 1501135473

This “comforting…thoughtful” (The Washington Post) guide to maintaining a high quality of life—from resilient old age to the first inklings of a serious illness to the final breath—by the New York Times bestselling author of Knocking on Heaven’s Door is a “roadmap to the end that combines medical, practical, and spiritual guidance” (The Boston Globe). “A common sense path to define what a ‘good’ death looks like” (USA TODAY), The Art of Dying Well is about living as well as possible for as long as possible and adapting successfully to change. Packed with extraordinarily helpful insights and inspiring true stories, award-winning journalist Katy Butler shows how to thrive in later life (even when coping with a chronic medical condition), how to get the best from our health system, and how to make your own “good death” more likely. Butler explains how to successfully age in place, why to pick a younger doctor and how to have an honest conversation with them, when not to call 911, and how to make your death a sacred rite of passage rather than a medical event. This handbook of preparations—practical, communal, physical, and spiritual—will help you make the most of your remaining time, be it decades, years, or months. Based on Butler’s experience caring for aging parents, and hundreds of interviews with people who have successfully navigated our fragmented health system and helped their loved ones have good deaths, The Art of Dying Well also draws on the expertise of national leaders in family medicine, palliative care, geriatrics, oncology, and hospice. This “empowering guide clearly outlines the steps necessary to prepare for a beautiful death without fear” (Shelf Awareness).

The Art of Conversation in Cancer Care

The Art of Conversation in Cancer Care
Author: Richard P. McQuellon
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 161
Release: 2021-09-23
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0197500315

Every day, thousands of people are diagnosed with cancer or other life-threatening illnesses. Despite the best of intentions, it is not always easy to communicate well under these circumstances or find deep empathy for something one has never experienced. When is it best to speak, and when to be silent? How can someone provide real comfort, and how can relationships with loved ones facing serious illness be enhanced in this most difficult time? Written by a psychosocial oncologist and psychologist-theologian, The Art of Conversation in Cancer Care: Lessons for Caregivers offers practical suggestions for health professionals, families, and friends about talking to one who has cancer. This revised and updated second edition is organized around the themes of mortal time and healing conversation with cancer patients and their caregivers. Mortal time is not so much a specific period, but rather, the psychological experience encountering mortality that often accompanies the diagnosis of cancer. The first section of the book articulates the many ways people experience mortal time, including a range of adaptive and less adaptive methods. Next, the basic elements of healing conversation are delineated, with an emphasis on the hope that can spring from talking with a trusted companion. Empathy, listening carefully, and responding thoughtfully and compassionately are discussed. In the final section, the authors offer guidance for caregivers. This section includes material on the risks and costs of companionship as well as personal virtues that help a person navigate the demands of mortal time with their loved one. The authors discuss resilience and the consequences of absorbing suffering including empathy shift where the cancer caregiver becomes less empathic with minor illnesses in others. They conclude with the power of healing conversation in mortal time as a source of hope. Throughout, numerous patient vignettes illustrate the art of conversation in cancer medicine.

The Art of Conversation in Cancer Care

The Art of Conversation in Cancer Care
Author: Richard P. McQuellon
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 161
Release: 2021
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0197500293

"We use "mortal time" in our work to mean the experience of human beings confronting the prospect of death. This confrontation can stimulate intense feelings, a flurry of thoughts, and erratic or unusual behavior. In the broadest sense, mortal time is entered whenever death comes near, and that can happen either directly or vicariously. Hearing the words, "you have cancer," and signing a medical consent form where death is a possible medical "complication," are direct experiences of mortal time. Learning of a loved one's cancer diagnosis, losing a family member in an automobile accident, or reading about a missing child are vicarious experiences of mortal time. The power of tragedy in the theatre can brings us into the experience of mortality. King Lear's madness in the face of betrayal propels him toward an untimely death. The focus in this book is on the particular and powerful experience of entering mortal time when someone receives a diagnosis of cancer, a life-threatening illness. As we noted in our introduction to this second edition, the experience of mortal time in cancer medicine has changed with new treatments. A cancer diagnosis could mean an illness where rapid progression toward death is looming, or where there is only the distant possibility of death. Now there is a third option: the prospect of longer survival with metastatic disease due to the promise of additional therapies, facilitated by next generation genome sequencing. This means, a lengthier period of mortal time and uncertainty for many cancer patients. MORTAL TIME: HOW LONG DOES IT LAST? There are, of course, many instances in which people far exceed their statistically predicted life span. This holds true whether it be the prediction of a physician in the midst of treating an illness or the projected life span of an insurance life-expectancy table. In Part II we give an example of how misleading statistics can be when we discuss the idea of false hope. When mortal time looms with the diagnosis of cancer, it may stretch from days to years, with patients encountering both helpful treatments that lead to periods of remission and recurrences of disease requiring additional treatment. Some patients may never experience a time when it is apparent that they are dying until the last days. The interval between living and dying that we are concerned with here is not primarily chronological time, measured in days, weeks, and months. The hallmark of mortal time is the person's unique biological, psychological, social, and spiritual experience of the prospect and meaning of death, a prospect that confronts their caregivers as well. Mortal time is "kairos" time, the ancient Greek word meaning the time of decisions. When someone enters mortal time directly, their caregivers enter the same time zone vicariously. What they do together in mortal time, especially how they speak and listen to each other, affects the quality and meaning of life for all involved, in the moment and beyond"--

Mastering Communication with Seriously Ill Patients

Mastering Communication with Seriously Ill Patients
Author: Anthony Back
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 148
Release: 2009-03-02
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 1139477927

Physicians who care for patients with life-threatening illnesses face daunting communication challenges. Patients and family members can react to difficult news with sadness, distress, anger, or denial. This book defines the specific communication tasks involved in talking with patients with life-threatening illnesses and their families. Topics include delivering bad news, transition to palliative care, discussing goals of advance-care planning and do-not-resuscitate orders, existential and spiritual issues, family conferences, medical futility, and other conflicts at the end of life. Drs Anthony Back, Robert Arnold, and James Tulsky bring together empirical research as well as their own experience to provide a roadmap through difficult conversations about life-threatening issues. The book offers both a theoretical framework and practical conversational tools that the practising physician and clinician can use to improve communication skills, increase satisfaction, and protect themselves from burnout.

The Art of Conversation

The Art of Conversation
Author: Judy Apps
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2014-06-03
Genre: Self-Help
ISBN: 0857085387

Good conversation is at the heart of networking, meetings, interviews, negotiations and raising your profile. It can ease your way in work, enabling you to build alliances, create strong relationships with staff, bosses and clients, succeed at interviews, motivate and inspire. But conversation is something most of us were never taught! We learn to speak as babies, but how conversation actually works is something most of us pick up only haphazardly, and many have yet to learn. Why is it some of us are stuck for words, but others blabber or can’t stop? What is it that some people have naturally which enables them to converse comfortably and easily, to engage people and build better relationships? The Art of Conversation will show you step by step how to converse skillfully and enjoyably with other people, at home, at work, on the phone and in the street- even if you’re daunted now, discover the difference good conversation can make in every aspect of your life. Learn to: -Overcome the most common block to good conversation- fear; find out how to break the silence and keep the conversation going - Understand the different types of conversation and how they work- which topics and language are suitable for the occasion - Learn simple methods for being heard and understood, including speaking clearly and audibly, listening well and using non-verbal communication - Find out how to hold a conversation in tricky situations, including how to disagree, how to speak to those in authority and people you find difficult -Use conversation to form relationships, improve friendships, make the sale, chat people up, to learn, influence and persuade.

The Art of Conversation

The Art of Conversation
Author: Peter Burke
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
Total Pages: 178
Release: 1993
Genre: Conversation
ISBN: 9780745611105

The Art of Conversation is a major contribution to the social history of language – a relatively new field which has become the focus of lively interdisciplinary debate in recent years. Drawing on the work of sociolinguists and others, Burke uses their concept while reserving the right to qualify their theories where the historical record makes this seem appropriate. Like the sociolinguists, Burke in concerned with the way language varies according to who is communicating to whom, on what occasion, in what medium and on what topic. Unlike many sociolinguists, Burke adds a historical dimension, treating language as an inseparable part of social history. This approach is outlined and justified in the first chapter and then exemplified in the remaining four, which deal with the early modern period. Among the topics discussed are the changing role of Latin, which is shown to be very much alive in the age of its alleged decline; language and identity in Italy, a politically divided region at the time but one where educated elites had a common language; the art of conversation, in other words the advice on speaking in polite company offered in hundreds of treaties of the period; and silence, viewed as an act of communication with a significance which changes over time and varies according to the setting and the persons who are silent. The Art of Conversation will be of great interest to students and scholars in social and cultural history, linguistics, the sociology of language and the ethnography of communication.

Art of Conversation

Art of Conversation
Author: James Morris
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 196
Release: 1986-06-02
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0671632752

From Simon & Schuster, The Art of Conversation explores the magic key to personal and social popularity. Following the simplest suggestions and rules found in this book, author James Morris can make you a truly outstanding conversationalist - and bring you popularity and success with people that you never thought possible!