Description: What Do You Do When You Don't Know What To Do?
In one of Liam Farrell’s typically hilarious blogs, he relates the painful task of explaining that an elderly relative, instead of dying as expected, has perked up and is enjoying the company of her extended family who have flown in from their far flung lives across the world …expecting a death. ( https://drliamfarrell.wordpress.com/2017/05/09/breaking-good-news-in-a-bad-way/ ). The family are not best pleased that their well laid life plans had been interrupted by the false expectation of grannies death. A
This got me thinking about why and how breaking good news and be just as hard as breaking bad news and sometimes gets us into clinical WDYDWYDKWTD moments.
Bad news means something that changes your view of the future for the worse; we easily recognise how a cancer diagnosis an abnormal smear or even an allergy could do that, But good news? Surely everyone is keen on that? As Dr Farrell discovered it all depends on the context and the way you tell it.