The COMFORT Model
The COMFORT Model is a pioneering, research-based approach designed to enhance communication between nurses, patients, and families—especially during critical care transitions and end-of-life moments. Offered as a teachable curriculum of seven modules, it meets key learning objectives in communication attitude, knowledge, and skill. The model empowers nurses with practical tools and compassionate language to provide emotional support, reduce confusion, and foster trust. Proven to improve self-efficacy, confidence, and comfort in palliative care communication, the COMFORT Model helps make complex healthcare conversations more effective and human-centered.
below are microlearning courses for onboarding and upskilling communication training for health care professionals working with family in palliative care, hospice care, and acute care settings
Essential Tools for Talking With Family Caregivers
Deep Listening: Reflexive Skills for Working With Families
Strategies for Navigating Conflict With Family
Optimizing Communication to Reduce Family Grief
Care Plans: Helping Family Understand Decline in a Patient
CONNECT –This module presents the communication process to understand the patient’s story and to recognize task and relationship practices.
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OPTIONS –This module teaches about health-literacy, and how to understand and respect a patient’s/family’s cultural orientation.
FAMILY CAREGIVER – Families have their own communication patterns. This module teaches how to observe communication patterns within the family and in particular, recognize the caregiver’s communication pattern.
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MAKING MEANING –This module shows how to engage in active listening and understand nonverbal communication.
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OPENINGS – There are key points in patient/family care where we are given the opportunity to begin important conversations and to find common ground. This module teaches out to look for those openings.
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RELATING – This module speaks to the fact that patients/families may have multiple goals and that these need to be taken into consideration. It also instructs us how to link care to the quality-of-life domains.
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TEAM – This module illustrates how to develop team processes, cultivate team structures and distinguish successful collaboration from group cohesion.
Additional Resources
COMFORT Communication App
This is a smartphone application (app). As an mHealth translation of the COMFORT curriculum, it is designed to provide supportive communication tools for healthcare providers encountering communication challenges with patients, families, and team members. Written at a sixth-grade level, it offers practice suggestions to support healthcare providers. When tested, participants found it easy to use and navigate, indicating they would use the app with patients, families and other team members. A revised version now includes COVID-19 communication resources for providers.
Goldsmith, J., Wittenberg, E., Ferrell, B. (2015). An App to Support Difficult Interactions among Provider, Patient, and Family. Journal of the Advanced Practitioner in Oncology. 6(5), 479-483. doi: 10.6004/jadpro.2015.6.5.8
Plain Language Planner
This tool breaks down into plain language (both Spanish and English) common medications and treatments that cancer patients receive. It describes side effects that patients may experience in easy-to-understand words and gives, also in plain language, practical suggestions on how to prepare for treatment. In short, it removes the mystery from the long and complicated terms patients may hear in the course of their cancer journey. The COMFORT Plain Language Planner is available in hard copy and as part of the COMFORT Health Communication App. This application was tested on a group of 155 health care professionals and a comparison between written responses before and after the education sessions showed improvement in the use of plain language.
Wittenberg, E., Goldsmith, J., Ferrell, B., & Small Platt, C. (2015). Enhancing Communication Related to Symptom Management Through Plain Language: A Brief Report. Journal of Pain and Symptom Management. [Epub ahead of print Jun 4, 2015]. doi: 10.1002/pon.3862