Patients coming under the care of a specialist palliative care unit are, sadly, in a unique position to describe and demonstrate communication issues, particularly the breaking of bad news and details of treatment and prognosis. This paper outlines many of the issues as experienced by these patients and describes how these insights can be shared with medical students, registrars and general practitioners. Students can hear directly from the patients how communications and explanations could be improved, what ambiguous or hurtful phrases could be avoided and what such patients most want to hear.