ABSTRACT
This chapter considers which are the key issues involved in planning and delivering communication skills training and to frame some of the debates, dilemmas and challenges. It discusses the context in which communication skills training has developed for healthcare professionals communicating with cancer and palliative care patients. Compassionate and effective communication is arguably the cement which holds together all other aspects of care. Educationalists are ideally placed to ensure that a patient-centred approach and good communication skills are explicit in all courses and not sidelined as a 'specialist subject'. The chapter identifies common aims and outcomes for communication skills training and discusses the relationship between knowledge, attitude and skills. It states that the development of communication skills training involves a compromise between what is ideal, pragmatic and politically acceptable. Nowhere are the tensions between these forces more apparent than in the organisation of delivery of training.
