To be mortal is human: professional consensus around the need for more psychology in palliative care

White et al highlight that death and dying is everyone’s business, yet is often neglected in the training of multidisciplinary health professionals (MDHP). While physicians play a critical role in endoflife care, patients interact with a range of health professionals. As such, it is vital that MDHP are also trained in palliative care, including endoflife communication. Nursing and allied health professionals also spend considerable time with patients developing strong therapeutic relationships fundamental to the success of challenging conversations when adjusting to incurable illness. 3 Nevertheless, White et al’s survey noted considerable variability in the availability of palliative care and endofliferelated content in UKbased undergraduate nursing and allied health courses. Only 16% of the social work courses surveyed included such training. Similarly, in Australia, 96% of MDHP perceived that their undergraduate education had underprepared them for the clinical realities of working with palliative care patients. Consistent with identified gaps in the literature, White et al’s survey did not include psychologists. Psychologists are ideally placed to provide specialist endoflife care as they are already trained in sophisticated communication skills and have the capacity to navigate challenging emotional terrain. Assisting individuals grappling with uncertainty, anxiety, grief and loss, demoralisation and hopelessness is psychologists’ ‘core business’. Further training to apply these highlevel therapeutic skills to endoflife care is critical. Vivekananda et al interviewed psychologists, many of whom had specialist endoflife experience (21/35, 60%) and identified core domains in which psychologists should contribute to endoflife care (table 1). There is much to be gained through better integration of psychology into endoflife care and communication—yet currently, disciplinespecific endoflife training for psychologists appears rare. We collected pilot data from Australian clinical psychologists on their experiences in endoflife communication and their training needs. Led by the first author, a 1day experiential workshop on endoflife communication focused on tailoring these skills to the needs of adolescents and young adults with lifelimiting illness (2019). Most clinical psychologists in this smallgroup workshop (n=11) worked in private practice (n=7, 64%), with an average of 10 years’ professional experience (range=0–32 years, SD=10.21), yet with little experience working with young people with incurable illness (none had worked with a young person who had died). Over a third of participants stated that experiential opportunities to practice skills were the most valuable part of the workshop (n=4, 36%). When asked about barriers that prevented them from facilitating these conversations, ‘not having the skills personally or knowing how to start’ was the main barrier (n=7, 64%). Our sample identified workshops as the most helpful training method to equip them in future (n=8, 72%), followed by experiential training, hardcopy resources and video resources (n=6, 55% for each). At the conclusion of the workshop, most of our sample still reported moderate anxiety with respect to discussing endoflife with patients and their families (n=7, 64%). Effective training in endoflife care is likely to require repeated, experiential learning opportunities. Psychologists are well equipped to identify and address the natural and common phenomenon of death anxiety. In addition to facilitating endoflife communication directly with patients and families, psychologists can support the multidisciplinary team with grouplevel reflective practice