Fundamental Principles: Basic Strategies in Communication Skills for Clinical Oncology

This course is designed to teach you four useful communication strategies: CLASS, SPIKES, EVE and CONE.

CLASS is the fundamental protocol for all clinical interviews.
EVE is a special strategy to use inside of other protocols when responding to emotions within any type of interaction.
SPIKES is a protocol to use when you must break bad news.
CONES is a variation of the SPIKES protocol that is useful for error disclosure.

You can then explore each of these strategies in depth. We have included explanations of what they are and how they work, as well as video vignettes that show a physician (Dr. Robert Buckman) actually using them in clinical scenarios. The patients in these encounters are professional "standardized patient" actors, but the vignettes are unscripted and depict situations that arise not uncommonly in the practice of oncology.

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