Based on their experience as teachers of communication skills training for oncology clinicians, the authors report their observations and reflect on open questions and future challenges with regard to communication in cancer care. Both of us have been training oncologists and oncology nurses in communication skills training (CST) for many years (Kiss 1999). This might be the reason why the editor asked us to comment on CST from a clinical point of view. We will therefore share some observations we made while doing such training and we will try to define future tasks.