Providing guidance and advice on the challenging art of listening, this book responds directly to the expressed learning needs of hospice and palliative care volunteers regarding their communication skills in end-of-life care.
Listening can be mentally, physically, and spiritually exhausting, often highlighted in books about hospice and palliative care but never taking the spotlight. This accessible companion provides hospice and palliative care workers with a variety of helpful insights and suggestions drawn from a solid base of current theoretical concepts and clinical research.
With personal reflections on being listened to, the guide includes strategies for becoming a more effective listener, as well as exploring the challenges of listening, the need for self-care and spiritual and ethical considerations. By expanding their own capacity for empathy, compassion and understanding the wider narrative of illness, hospice and palliative care volunteers will become even better listeners in their essential roles.
Listening can be mentally, physically, and spiritually exhausting, often highlighted in books about hospice and palliative care but never taking the spotlight. This accessible companion provides hospice and palliative care workers with a variety of helpful insights and suggestions drawn from a solid base of current theoretical concepts and clinical research.
With personal reflections on being listened to, the guide includes strategies for becoming a more effective listener, as well as exploring the challenges of listening, the need for self-care and spiritual and ethical considerations. By expanding their own capacity for empathy, compassion and understanding the wider narrative of illness, hospice and palliative care volunteers will become even better listeners in their essential roles.
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Reviews
In what is an increasingly professionalized world, this practical guide is a rare thing: a book written to upskill volunteers which also acknowledges the vital contribution they make within modern healthcare. Delivering straightforward advice is an accessible style, Robert Mundle demonstrates how 'just' listening is never just listening; it is vital to any good healthcare.
Using a combination of compelling vignettes and reflective exercises, Robert Mundle provides readers with practical strategies to enhance their communication skills. Although directed to a hospice volunteer audience, this guide proves a useful resource for all involved in caring for those facing end of life. Mundle highlights the importance of creating space for the patient's voice to be heard.
Robert Mundle's book, How to Be an Even Better Listener is filled with 'pearls of wisdom' that can inform and guide hospice volunteers as they accompany patients, families and clients. He speaks beautifully to the art of listening and the gift of presence, and how stillness and self-awareness contribute to the richness of relationship for those we serve and we who serve.
How to Be an Even Better Listener reminds us that we all have stories to tell and that we are connected by our longing to be seen and heard. I believe that reading this book and practising the craft of listening can deepen and enrich our relationships with each person we encounter.