Communicating bad news: a neglected need?

Abstract Communicating bad news is an essential tool in medical practice, but the undervaluation of its teaching can turn it into an additional source of suffering for patients. This study analyzed landscape and the experiences of medical students regarding the communication of bad news, based on responses to an electronic questionnaire administered to 54 final-year students. Among them, 46.2% reported lack of practical scenarios that would enable developing this skill, while only 11% rated their communication as good or very good; 33% had no training for such situations; and 55.5% had only observed other professionals breaking bad news. These findings highlight a serious undervaluation of this topic in medical education, as evidenced by the small number of students trained for this task and the limited number of those who practiced communicating bad news during their training.