By Elaine Wittenberg-Lyles and Joy Goldsmith
Both with PhDs in Communication, Elaine Wittenberg-Lyles and Joy Goldsmith are long time collaborators and co-authors of three books on palliative care communication (Communication as Comfort; Dying with Comfort; and Communication in Palliative Nursing).
“We welcome communication experts Elaine and Joy.”
WOW, talk about pressure—being introduced as a “communication expert.” Patients and family members wonder, “What does that mean?” We wonder, “What does that mean?” Our husbands are still trying to figure out exactly what we do and how we make a living. The truth is, we aren’t communication experts at all. Rather, we are really passionate about communication and health.
And quite honestly, we are pretty geeky. Earlier this year, for the first time, we met Dr. Diane Meier (Joy has called her “the mothership”; for the record, I have never called her the mothership). Her scholarship and advocacy around palliative care has shaped our views and our careers. We were like anxious schoolgirls about to meet a high school prom date. We snapped photos and oohed and ahhhed over her. At one point, one of us shed a tear!
We clearly are not “communication experts” who can keep composure (in fact, we both swear) and remain calm under pressure. We do not always have use of perfect grammar; we cannot persuade you to do anything magical, and we sometimes forget what we are saying. Our passion for communication means that we try to be responsible communicators by addressing, with compassion, those elephant-in-the-room topics. You know the kind …. dying, dying, palliative care, hospice. And our job, as health researchers, is to help others learn how to do this!
Expectations aside, our goal is to develop tools to help others with palliative care communication. Our latest venture is a free iOS APP called Health Communication. We hope you will check it out and share! It’s based on our palliative care communication research and our own COMFORT Communication Curriculum. As you grab your own pumpkin spice latte and take a break, we hope you will explore the tools and share your thoughts. We thought it easiest to organize it by two main categories: Communication Toolkit and Difficult Scenarios. We also added some video introductions (listen closely and you might hear our kids jumping on the hotel bed while we were shooting with our iPhone!). It’s our first venture at creating an APP – and with hardly any budget – and only self-taught skills! After all, we really aren’t “communication experts”!
Download it today and let us know your loves and hates – help us make it a better tool!
