"The health care professional working in a palliative care setting may be familiar with a professional counsellor working as a member of the care team. They may not always recognise the empowering effect that the use of empathy and counselling skills can have in their own encounters with patients and families. This book will give them the insight they need, the encouragement to apply skills, and the satisfaction that can come from the 'emotional holding' of distress, as well as the practical interventions that are a familiar part of clinical care." - Margaret Potter, Freelance Lecturer/Counsellor, Bereavement Studies

"This is a very empowering book. With its emphasis on all health care professionals having an important role in listening, accepting and eliciting the feelings and fears of patients as they face the end of life. After reading this book, I felt reassured to see some of the ways that I handle these difficult issues illustrated, and stimulated to reflect on alternative ways that might be of help in the future. The text centres around a series of carefully drafted vignettes, which are then skillfully used in the subsequent text to illustrate issues in a grounded and relevant way" - Dr Stephen Barclay, General Practitioner, Honorary Consultant in Palliative Medicine, Health Services Research Training Fellow, University of Cambridge

This book is for people working in palliative care, helping patients and families to manage and live with chronic and progressive illnesses where treatment is no longer aimed at a cure. Palliative care professionals are encouraged to work holistically, viewing themselves and their relationships with patients as significant therapeutic resources in their own right. The authors argue that sensitive counselling skills need to be used effectively by all palliative workers, not just by counsellors. The book discusses the place of counselling skills using an integrative biopsychosocial model of family systems medicine, taking into
account interactions between family life cycles, social conceptions of illness and treatment, the psychosocial typology of particular diseases, and family/professional belief systems. Each chapter considers counselling skills in relation to the overall care system (including the professional team and the family), not just the patient with the disease. Ideas are explored through clinical vignettes of common scenarios in palliative care.