A Clinician Communication Leadership Workshop Open to All Providers

Workshop experience by: Michael O’Connell, Interim Executive Director

Stanford Health Care/Stanford Medicine offers a program for providers called ACES (Advancing Communication Excellence at Stanford) that began in Fall 2017 and supports providers in their continued commitment to improve patient communication.  The program is available to all UHA providers with free CMEs/CEUs and is a phenomenal workshop that everyone is invited to attend.

I had the pleasure of attending the program and participating with Stanford faculty and UHA providers on ways to improve patient communication.

Throughout the day we worked on the following:

1. How to create rapport quickly through greeting and introductions, attending to patient comfort, small talk before big talk, and acknowledging communication barriers.
2. Eliciting the list of all the patient’s Items with an exhaustive “What Else?” ask.
3. Negotiating the patient agenda by establishing patient priorities, stating clinical goals, and negotiating a plan.
4. Opening the conversation with open-ended questions, listening, exploring perspectives, and patient emotions.
5. Responding to emotional cues through words that convey partnership with the patient, acknowledging patient emotion, apologizing as appropriate, showing respect, legitimizing the patient’s concerns, and support them.
6. Sharing information using plain language and incorporating the patient’s perspective.
7. Assessing patient understanding with ART (ask, respond, tell) loops.
8. Summarize and clarify with the patient via teachback using ART.

While the focus of the program was on patient communication, the learning from the program can be applied to improving both professional and personal interactions and I found great value in the day’s workshop.

Providers can sign up for the program here, and there are still openings available for you to attend.  It’s well worth the effort and contributes to UHA’s commitment to be a preeminent medical foundation.

Sign up now and lead the commitment to improving patient communication.