Table 2.

Top Ten Tips Palliative Care Clinicians Should Know About Attending to the Existential Experience

Top ten tips
1. Existential needs are common but insufficiently recognized and undertreated.
2. The existential experience exists on a spectrum from suffering to openness and joy—clinicians can foster existential growth along this spectrum.
3. Salient moments during the illness experience can activate existential questions and crises and are important touchpoints for intervention.
4. Whole-person palliative care requires a broad understanding of quality of life, including its existential dimensions.
5. Identifying existential needs is essential to guide prognostic awareness and clinical decision making.
6. Holistic interventions can help clinicians attend to patients' existential experiences and can be integrated throughout all types of clinical care.
7. Clinicians can use existing communication skills to explore the existential experience.
8. Patients benefit from the expertise of all members of the interdisciplinary team when navigating existential experiences.
9. Existential matters are rarely experienced by the individual alone.
10. When we explore our own existential experience, we can find ways to hold space for our own distress (which may also resonate with patients).