Experiences in online communication teaching

[Eva Doherty]

Hi Geurt I have just run two two hour sessions on communication skills. One was on BBN and the other was on Open Disclosure. I had 8 students for the first session and six for the second one. I have to say it was hard going on me however the feedback from the students was excellent. I got them to do some reading of slides in advance and then we started with some feedback about that and then a discussion of the issues important to the topic. I finished off with a few role plays with me as the patient. I wonder would it work to get students to roleplay together and somehow I doubt it. You could have a simulated patient present also. hope thats helpful. I’m looking forward to seeing the document that Marcy and Sandra are working on about this. the next challenge is going to be how to assess the communication skills online!

[Marcy Rosenbaum]

Hello. In case people have not seen them, Sandra Winterburn and I with help from colleagues have put together some guides for teaching communication online. They can be found at the top of the EACH covid 19 pageEACH covid-19 resource page
We’d be pleased for any feedback or additional ideas. Hope to post some brief videos on the topic next week. Wishing everyone well.

[Sandra Winterburn]

Hello All,
We have just completed a series of undergraduate communication skills sessions taught completely online. Our sessions are usually three hours long but were modified to be delivered in a shorter time of 90 minutes to smaller groups. We were concerned about the suitability of some content e.g. Breaking Bad News etc for online teaching but all went well and the initial evaluations from students have been very positive indeed. We are planning to facilitate some focus groups with both teachers and students in the next few weeks so we can learn for next term. Happy to discuss the methods we used if anyone would like to discuss.
Best wishes Sandra UK

[Peter Gillen]

Hi Marcy/Sandra many thanks for the the documents on online communication skills teaching. i found them really excellent although i wasnt able for “security” reasons to view the videos unfortunately.
Well done and looking forward to contributing further material from the national healthcare communication programme here in Ireland in collaboration with RCSI in the very near future.
Peter Gillen