INTRODUCTION TO THE COURSE

tEACH, the teaching committee of the EACH: International  Association of Communication in Healthcare, is delighted to announce a half-day online course on teaching communication skills in the clinical workplace.

It will be facilitated by experienced teachers from the tEACH Courses and Support for Trainers committee. The proceedings will be held in English and as much as possible will accommodate participants for whom English is not their first language.

CONTENT AND FORMAT

The primary focus of this course will be on approaches to incorporating teaching about communication into the clinical workplace, such as in clinics and on hospital wards where learners participate in patient care. While teaching communication skills during clinical training is important in order to reinforce communication skills learned in formal courses and develop new skills, clinical supervisors can find this task challenging to accomplish.  This course will explore “informal” clinical communication teaching opportunities such as role modeling, observation and responding to patient presentations as well as more formal one to one and small group approaches.

The course will be highly interactive and participant centred, with a mixture of experiential learning and didactic teaching:

• Participants will share their experiences and concerns regarding opportunities, strategies and challenges for communication teaching in the clinical setting and/or training and empowering clinical supervisors to emphasize communication skills during clinical teaching.
• Participants will also have the opportunity to practice and share a variety of approaches to workplace based communication skills teaching.
• Group problem solving will seek to address obstacles that participants face in attempting to emphasize communication skills during clinical training.
• All participants will be given the opportunity to identify how insights from the course can be practically implemented in their specific institutional setting and what they perceive as the most important take home points from the course.

Course Objectives:

• To describe challenges and obstacles to teaching communication skills in clinical context
• To use teachable moments in a busy clinical environment
• To provide feedback to learners in an effective and efficient manner

Facilitators:

Jane Ege Møller, PhD, is Associate Professor at Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University in Denmark and the Academic Lead of the clinical communication skills courses for residents in Central Denmark Region. She is currently the chair of tEACH, the teaching committee of EACH. She has more than 20 years of experience as a researcher and teacher in the field of clinical communication and medical education.

Christoph Becker, MD, is a Consultant at the University Hospital Basel, working in the Department of General Internal Medicine and the Department of Medical Communication. Together with the department lead, he is responsible for the communication curriculum at the University of Basel and is involved in the design and delivery of communication skills courses for residents and hemato-oncologists across German-speaking Switzerland. He has over 10 years of experience as a researcher and educator in the field of clinical communication.

Ragnar Joakimsen, MD, is an endrocrinologist and Professor of Clinical Medicine at UiT Arctic University of Norway, Tromso. He has been a member of tEACH since 2013, and he teaches communication skills for undergraduates, graduates and postgraduates. Furthermore, he teaches clinical skills and develops assessments for both communication skills, clinical skills and medical knowledge.

DATE AND TIME

30th October 2025 – 07:00am to 10:30am (GMT-UK)