Communication Skills: Delivering Bad News, Conducting a Goals of Care Family Meeting, and Advance Care Planning.

Primary care clinicians face difficult conversations with patients across the life cycle. As clinicians care for patients in different health states, the focus of these challenging conversations shifts. Even the most skilled clinicians struggle to find the right words at the right time in these scenarios. This article focuses on communication skills to make difficult conversations easier, whether through assigning a health care proxy, breaking bad news, having conversations about serious illness, or leading a family meeting to discuss goals of care.