Nobody sits you down in medical school or residency and teaches you how to tell a patient that the scan came back with metastatic disease, or how to tell a family that their mother is at the end of her life. You are expected to learn one of the hardest conversations in medicine by watching someone else do it and hoping it sinks in. This episode is the framework I wish somebody had given me as a resident, built from the hospitalist and walk-in side of the job.
We go through the whole conversation start to finish. How to prepare before you walk in, how to control the setting, how to summarize the hospital course, the exact words I use to deliver the news, why the silence afterward matters more than anything you say next, how to lead the plan while handing control back to the patient, and how to carry the emotional weight of it without letting it follow you into the next room. If you are a premed, med student, resident, or newly independent attending, this is the part of the job that clinical knowledge alone will not cover.
0:00 The Patient I Couldn't Talk To
1:27 Why You Can't Make Bad News Painless
3:02 What Patients Actually Hear
5:16 How To Prepare Before The Conversation
8:09 Delivering The News, Word For Word
14:25 Next Steps And Giving Back Control
19:59 How To Carry It Afterward
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Personal
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About Me
I am a physician (M.D.) practicing a mix of hospitalist medicine, and urgent care. I learned a lot in my journey to becoming a physician and about more than just medicine. Follow along as I reflect and teach what I wish I knew, which for the most part, is the stuff you don’t learn in school.
Get In Touch:Happy to chat, reach out via above options.
