We developed a 3-part curriculum for teaching the basics of communication about goals of care (GOC) in older persons targeted towards medical students, residents, fellows, and faculty. There are 3 modules: 

1. Communicating Serious News - identifies strategies for effective communication and especially communicating serious news to patients or family members and improving our ability to transmit this news in an empathic and effective manner.

2. Goals of Care Discussion -focuses on the essential components of a GOC discussion; initiation, understanding the patient and family perspective, surrogate decision making, and concluding remarks clarifying and summarizing key discussion points and areas of understanding.

3. Managing conflict with patients and families - focuses on how to address frustrated and perhaps angry patients or family members who sometimes don’t feel that they are being listened to.  As providers, we are often put in this situation with few resources or skills to help guide us on how to deal with the patient’s and family’s emotions as well as our own. 

Each module contains a didactic lecture (45-60 minutes), examples of faculty role play (10-15 minutes), and instructions for participant role play activities. Each module is focused around a clinical case scenario done in dyads (30 minutes), and a sample evaluation form. Each module is best done in 2-hour sessions and in small groups (10-20 participants) but can be modified for 1-hour sessions. The content is applicable to a range of learners although the participant role play will likely be more meaningful for the more advanced learners.