Journal of palliative medicine
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Background: Practicing physicians require serious illness communication (SIC) skills to ensure high-quality, humanistic care for patients and families as they face life-changing medical decisions. However, a majority of U. S. medical schools do not require formal training in SIC and fail to provide students deliberate practice before graduation. ⋯ Conclusions: Medical schools are failing to consistently train and ensure basic competency in effective, compassionate SIC. Curriculum mapping allows schools to evaluate their current state on a particular topic such as SIC, ensure proper assessment, and evaluate curricular changes over time. Through the deliberate inclusion of SIC competencies in longitudinal curriculum design, we can fill this training gap and create best practices in undergraduate medical education.