Breaking bad news
In recent decades, the focus on competence in medical education has meant that communication skills are now an integral part of undergraduate and postgraduate medical curricula, and students and junior doctors get comprehensive training on the optimal ways to break bad news. As we keep hearing in the media, patients unfortunately sometimes receive bad news in the emergency department, and this was the focus of a new Brazilian study.1 The authors analysed 73 bad-news communication encounters from the perspective of physicians, patients, and family members. They found that doctors and receivers disagree in relation to what transpired throughout bad-news communications. Discrepancies were more evident in issues involving …