Who Should Attend

The course is directed towards teachers of health professionals (for example medical students, nurses, physiotherapists, doctors) who wish to explore the underlying skills and structure of health care interactions. It is suitable for teachers of a variety of experience and is particularly suitable for those early on in the teaching careers.

“What to Teach” Course

The “what to teach” course will be highly interactive and participant centred. It will be facilitated by experienced teachers from the teaching committee of EACH, International Association of Communication in Healthcare. The proceedings will be held in English and as much as possible will accommodate participants for whom English is not their first language.

The primary focus of this two day, non-residential course will be on the structure and skills of health-care communication. The course will look at the various models in use to conceptualise health care communication and how to utilise these to analyse communication skills in observed encounters with patients. This will help participants clarify what they are trying to teach and learn, define the individual specific skills of communication and break down the complex task of the interview into its individual components. The course will be a mixture of experiential learning and didactic teaching. We will explore communication skills by observing prepared videos and also work in small groups with simulated patients to recreate situations where we can analyse communication skills within a teaching session. Participants will be expected to interview simulated patients during the course in order to create encounters for analysis and practice.