We are delighted to announce a two-module online course focusing on “What to teach” in communication skills teaching.  The course is directed towards teachers of health professionals (for example teachers of students and clinicians in medicine, nursing, physiotherapy, etc.)  who wish to explore the foundational 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.

This is a shorter online version of our two-day annual ‘What to teach’ course that will focus on the basic core clinical communication skills rather than specific communication challenges. The primary focus of this course will be on the structure and skills of healthcare communication. The course will look at the various models in use to conceptualise health care communication and analyse communication skills in observed encounters with patients. This will help participants:

• clarify what they are trying to teach
• define the individual specific skills of effective clinical communication
• break down the complex task of the interview into its individual components

We will explore communication skills by observing prepared videos and work in small groups/break out rooms.

The online course will be facilitated by experienced teachers from tEACH, 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.

Please note, this course is not about online facilitation skills but rather the content of what should be included in any communication teaching sessions.

Facilitators

Annegrethe Nielsen
University College Copenhagen, Denmark
Annegrethe Nielsen, Ph.D, is a senior lecturer at the nursing department at University College Copenhagen. She has been teaching communication skills to students and professionals of a variety of healthcare professions for more than 20 years and is a member of the teaching committee of EACH. She is especially interested in the skills of shared decision making and how to teach and implement the skills in professional practice.

Anna Sonkin
Anna Sonkin is a pediatrician, palliative care physician and medical educator based in Moscow, Russia. Born in the USA into a Russian family, she moved with her parents back to their native Moscow in 1991, soon after the fall of the Soviet Union. She studied Medicine and completed residency in General Pediatrics in Moscow.

Her interest in clinical communication skills training, which was almost nonexistent in Russia, started during a 2-year postgraduate program in Palliative Medicine in Cardiff University, UK. Later, she attended the EACH train-the-trainer courses and in 2015 became a member of tEACH. She now runs a small private company that she owns which provides communication skills training for medical professionals in Russia and other russian-speaking countries and also aims to raise awareness about the need for such training to be incorporated into all medical education and assessment. She keeps a blog and is working on a podcast about medical communication.

NB. Timings are GMT + 1.