Breaking bad news to people with learning disabilities: barriers and tools
Intended for healthcare professionals
CPD    

Breaking bad news to people with learning disabilities: barriers and tools

Joanne Green Senior lecturer, School of Nursing, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, England
Jo Wilcox Lecturer, School of Nursing, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, England

Why you should read this article:
  • To recognise the challenges in breaking bad news to people with learning disabilities

  • To consider various tools that you could use in your practice to break bad news

  • To count towards revalidation as part of your 35 hours of CPD, or you may wish to write a reflective account (UK readers)

  • To contribute towards your professional development and local registration renewal requirements (non-UK readers)

Breaking bad news is a challenging aspect of healthcare professionals’ roles in any setting. In learning disability settings, specific challenges compound the difficulty of this task. For example, a person who has cognitive difficulties may not understand an abstract concept such as death; the person’s family may be concerned that hearing bad news will be too distressing for them; or the healthcare professional may be reluctant to talk about death because of their own beliefs and values.

This article discusses the barriers related to breaking bad news to people with learning disabilities. It also describes several tools – generic and specific to the learning disability field – which healthcare professionals can use to inform and improve their practice in this area.

Learning Disability Practice. doi: 10.7748/ldp.2023.e2208

Peer review

This article has been subject to external double-blind peer review and checked for plagiarism using automated software

Correspondence

jgreen24@uclan.ac.uk

Conflict of interest

None declared

Green J, Wilcox J (2023) Breaking bad news to people with learning disabilities: barriers and tools. Learning Disability Practice. doi: 10.7748/ldp.2023.e2208

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank Fiona Fisher Bullivant, learning disability nurse and lecturer in learning disability nursing, University of Central Lancashire, for her support with developing the initial ideas for this article

Published online: 27 February 2023

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