Tiny Jaarsma and Lisa Hjelmfors were invited to talk about the research project TALK-HF.

TALK-HF stands for Developing and evaluating a Training program improving Awareness, Level of Knowledge and the quality of communication concerning palliative care issues in Heart Failure patients .

The project is a collaboration between Tiny Jaarsma (Norrköping), Anna Strömberg (Linköping), Maria Friedrichsen (Norrköping), Jan Mårtensson (Jönköping) and Lisa Hjelmfors (Norrköping).

The presentation focused on ”Discussing prognosis and end-of-life with chronically ill patient/heart failure patients.”

Tiny presented results from recent (2012) findings describing that Swedish HF nurses are not always aware of the need for discussing prognosis and end-of-life with HF patients and that the nurses perceive barriers for having such discussions with patients. (Whole article available at http://www-ncbi-nlm-nih-gov.e.bibl.liu.se/pubmed/24480779)

Lisa presented preliminary results from focus group interviews with heart failure patients exploring their perspectives of discussing prognosis and end-of-life with health care professionals. In the interviews, the majority of the patients reported that they had never discussed these topics with a health care professional but many of the patients welcomed open, but sensitive discussions during the illness trajectory.

A lot of clinicians attended the lunch and it ended with a nice discussion.