International Forum on Quality and Safety in Healthcare

OCHER members Pål Gulbrandsen and Bård Fossli Jensen have been invited to present a 30 minute lecture at the International Forum on Quality and Safety in Healthcare in Paris, April 8-11, 2014. This invitation represents a strong recognition of the importance of doctor-patient communication training in the continuing endeavour to increase quality of care and improve patient safety. The title of the presentation isSafety, not satisfaction: Patient-centered communication training in a new medical era.

3rd OCHER international workshop

The 3rd OCHER international workshop preliminary program was mailed to invited participants Sep 13. Please note the deadlines: Registration including abstract October 21 to pal.gulbrandsen@medisin.uio.no, booking of accomodation and meals for OCHER members October 21 to reidun.skarerhogda@ahus.no, booking of accomodation/daypackages directly to the Thon Hotel Triaden, Lørenskog for non-OCHER members January 2. If you have any queries, contact pal.gulbrandsen@medisin.uio.no.

Presenters for the 3rd OCHER international workshop on communication research

Presenters for the 3rd OCHER international workshop on communication research will be the physician Mary Catherine Beach, associate professor, MD PhD, Johns Hopkins, Baltimore ,USA, sociologist Paul Drew, professor, Loughborough University, UK, and linguist Christopher Koenig, conversation analyst, University of California, San Fransisco, USA. The workshop will be held on January 15-17, 2014, and is open to researchers from Denmark, Sweden and Norway. The venue is as usual Thon Hotel Triaden, Lørenskog, Norway.

OCHER members have made successful contributions

OCHER members have made successful contributions to the International Conference on Communication in Healthcare in Montreal this fall. One symposium on conversation analysis submitted by Arnstein Finset was accepted, and several of our members also contribute to the Cues and Concerns symposium submitted by Lidia del Piccolo. Jennifer Gerwing and Karen Shklanka will run a workshop. Of six submitted scientific abstracts, five were accepted as orals, and one as poster. Submitting authors were Jennifer Gerwing, Pål Gulbrandsen, Tonje Stensrud, Arnstein Finset, Hanne-Lise Eikeland, and Knut Ørnes.

New anthology discussing clinical communication

In June 2013, a new anthology discussing clinical communication was launched. The book is in Norwegian. You can find more information about the book here.

Hospital physicians’ insight in own performance improved

Recently, we published a paper in Patient Education and Counseling, where we document that hospital physicians’ insight in own performance improved after a 20 hour communication skills course. Moreover, we also found that 3 1/2 years after the course, 59% of the physicians said this course changed their practice with lasting effect. This is the first paper evaluating communication skills training several years after. Again the power of the FOUR HABITS approach to effective clinical communication has been demonstrated.

Calendar and course updates with all planned communication skills training this year

We have now updated the calendar and courses with all planned communication skills training this year. We recently had a tremendous experience in Uppsala with very positive feedback from the participants. Nevertheless, we are continuously working on improvement of the concept, which has been demonstrated effective in a randomised controlled trial.

Criticism aimed at Fossli Jensen et al in Patient Education & Counseling

In the February issue of Patient Education & Counseling professor Anders Bærheim at the University of Bergen criticizes a previous work by Fossli Jensen et al in which a crossover randomized controlled trial was used to demonstrate the effect of a course in clinical communication. His point is that a crossover study is inadequate as this type of study requires that the situation at the start of the second intervention should be equal to the situation at the start of the first intervention. Read our response here.

Updated resources

We have now updated the resources on this website with several new links. There is a link for French speaking doctors, as well as English language links to websites in Australia and the USA that have excellent teaching material about communication in the emergency department, with cancer patients, and for doctors that do not have English as first language.