Families Find High-Quality End-of-Life Communication with Nursing Home Staff and Clinicians Uncommon

​Family decision-makers for individuals with advanced dementia rated the quality of communication with nursing home staff higher than with nursing home clinicians, but the scores for both were still rated poorly, according to a study published in the October 2018 issue of JAMDA. The study conducted in-person interviews for baseline data where 302 family decision-makers rated general communication behaviors (defined as "how" health care professionals provide support and communicate with patients and families) and end-of-life communication (defined as "what" professionals communicate about dying and care at the end of life) on a scale of 0 to 10 (0 was worst; "didn't do" was also scored as 0). The overall summary score for nursing home staff was 5.5 and clinicians earned a score of 3.7.