Top Ten Tips Palliative Care Clinicians Should Know About Supporting Coping in Serious Illness

Palliative care (PC) clinicians regularly encounter a spectrum of coping strategies, from responses such as humor, legacy-building, and meaning-making to more ambivalent behaviors such as avoidance, splitting, or control-seeking. Supporting adaptive coping is central to the role of all interprofessional PC clinicians to improve quality of life and patient outcomes. Drawing upon principles from psychotherapy, behavioral medicine, and PC research, this article provides guidance to understand, assess, and engage with patients' coping with intentionality. Harnessing a shared language and approach allows teams to align, self-reflect, collaborate, and respond with greater nuance and empathic attunement during profound moments in our patients' lives.