Communication and Care Coordination for the Palliative Care Team

By focusing on the individual professional in relation to team health and success, this book shows how to develop high-quality, high-performing palliative care teams. It explores the types of providers involved in palliative care, their roles, possible conflicts, and the opportunity to amplify their work as a team while overcoming the stigma that may be attached to palliative care. The book focuses on the foundational role of communication in leadership, team building, and the delivery of patient care. Palliative care continues to be a rapidly growing area of medicine. The book is designed to help us avoid common pitfalls while starting a team or correct issues in an already formed palliative care team. Unlike most books about palliative care, the book is geared toward equipping practicing healthcare professionals or soon-to-be-practicing students with practical solutions for working within complex, multifaceted palliative care teams. Departing from the traditional foci of provider–patient rapport and pain and symptom management, the book offers pragmatic solutions to common organizational headaches and unique palliative care team issues by helping practitioners consider the intricacies of interdisciplinary team dynamics, occupational culture, and self-care in emotional, labor–intensive positions. While this book will be especially attractive for the working palliative care professional, it will also be a useful socialization tool for medical and nursing schools, as well as graduate communication and social work programs and advanced undergraduate courses in health communication, nursing, and sociology. The text’s driving theme is an emphasis on the foundational nature of communication for individual and collective performance within palliative care teams. The authors frame communication as constitutive; in other words, our unique experience in our organization is based on how we approach communication in our interpersonal, group, and organizational relationships.