OCHER

The German Bertelsmann Stiftung (Bertelsmann Foundation) has recently issued a comprehensive report about national implementation of shared decision-making in nine leading countries. The report was authored by Angela Coulter, a distinguished researcher and one of the pioneers of the field. The report builds on an overview paper published in Zeitschrift für Evidenz, Fortbildung und Qualität in Gesundheitswesen (ZEFQ) prepared ahead of the 9th international conference on shared decision-making (Lyon 2017). OCHER members contributed to that paper. For communication researchers in general and those interested in SDM particularly the report provides a must-read overview of the state of affairs in this field around the world in 2017. You find it here.

We are pleased to announce the keynote speakers at OCHER 2019 January 16-18, 2019. Saul Weiner is professor of medicine, pediatrics and medical education at the University of Illinois Chicago, and has over several years conducted the most extensive study to date of communication in real consultations, using it for quality improvement in the VA system. Markus Reuber is a professor of clinical neurology at the University of Sheffield. He has provided several very interesting studies of communication with patients with neurological impairment, using conversation analysis. Ellen Smets is a professor of clinical communication at the University of Amsterdam. She has provided a wide range of interesting studies on various aspects of clinical communication. Her focus is how research can help improve teaching of clinical communication. The three keynotes are some of the strongest researchers in the field of clinical communication worldwide, and we are lucky to have them all at OCHER together.

The dates for the 8th international OCHER research workshop on clinical communication are now fixed: January 16-18, 2019. The venue will, as always, be at Hotel Triaden, Lørenskog, Norway. Right outside Oslo and very conveniently placed about half an hour from Oslo airport. We are working on keynote speakers, they will be announced no later than August.

We have now made our biannual update of the publication list of OCHER members working in Norway. This time we have added 35 new papers to the list. This demonstrates the high output of research coming from this group, doubled from the first half of 2017. Search term used in PubMed is (Gulbrandsen P OR Finset A OR Eide H OR Svennevig J OR Gerwing J OR Ofstad EH OR Kasper J OR Steinsbekk A), limited backward to 1 Jun 2017. This search returned 60+ papers, but some were already included, and some were not related to OCHER (Kasper J includes several other authors than “our” Kasper).

OCHER 2018, which takes place on Thon Hotel Triaden Lørenskog on January 10-12, features three great international speakers, Douglas Maynard, Kathryn Pollak, and Anne Stiggelbout. In addition, 34 speakers will present their projects in two parallel sessions. OCHER is a cross-disciplinary workshop where communication scientists, physicians and other health personnel, linguists, psychologists and social scientists meet. Please find the final program here: OCHER 2018.

We have received 32 abstracts, very interesting topics indeed. This year we have more participants from Sweden than before. By today altogether 51 participants are registered, including local faculty and keynote speakers. Participants may expect the final program to be posted within two weeks.

We are now happy to disclose that we have been able to recruit three keynote speakers to OCHER 2018, following our intention to increase the maximum number of participants in the workshop to 60. Previously, we have presented Kathryn Pollak, an expert on the study of motivational interviewing in disease prevention, and Douglas Maynard, a leading expert on conversation analysis in medicine, both will attend the workshop. Today, we can also present Anne Stiggelbout,  a distinguished expert on shared decision making. In combination, the three of them cover a wide range of communication research challenges, and we look forward to their presentations and participation as discussants in the parallel sessions.

We have now made our biannual update of the publication list of OCHER members working in Norway. This time we have added 19 new papers to the list, and we have updated earlier papers with print references. This demonstrates the high output of research coming from this group. Search term used in PubMed is (Gulbrandsen P OR Finset A OR Eide H OR Svennevig J OR Gerwing J OR Ofstad EH OR Kasper J OR Steinsbekk A), limited backward to 1 Dec 2016.

The dates for the 7th international OCHER research workshop on clinical communication are now fixed: January 10-12, 2018. The venue will, as always, be at Hotel Triaden, Lørenskog, Norway. Right outside Oslo and very conveniently placed about half an hour from Oslo airport. We are working on keynote speakers, they will be announced in August.

This year’s International Conference on Communication in Healthcare will be held in Baltimore, Maryland on October 8-11. It is hosted by the American Academy on Communication in Healthcare in collaboration with the Health Literacy Annual Research Conference and is expected to have 6-800 participants. Other keynotes are Eliseo J. Pérez Stable, Marianne Schmid Mast, and Lisa Cooper. Read more about the conference here.