Looking for a way to improve skills? Want to build your program in healthcare communication? AACH has the ability to tailor institutional courses for faculty or clinicians and will work collaboratively with you to create a course that fits your needs.

Please contact Chris Pallozola, AACH executive director, at chris@AACHonline.org for information about what AACH can offer your organization.

Get Connected with AACH's doc.com: An interactive learning resource for healthcare communication

Go to our demonstration Web site where you can sign up for a 15-day free trial.

At AACH, we are certain that your efforts to develop learners competence in the core skills of communication and professionalism will better succeed if you/ they subscribe to doc.com: An interactive learning resource for healthcare communication.

doc.com module authors, with decades of teaching experience, demonstrate skills on video. The web resource has e-learning interactive features such as hot links to citations, easy movement between more or less text detail, active sidebars that name demonstrated skills, hot links to author commentaries on their interviews and (new feature!) patient commentaries, too. Module assessments provide feedback to learners and their teachers or course directors, including documentation to meet competency requirements. Our 40 modules cover all the communication competencies that a recent Institute of Medicine Report considered essential for physicians.

AACH

As the official journal of AACH, Patient Education and Counseling (PEC) is offered to AACH members at a special discount. Subscribe now for 2007 and receive

12 issues (print and online) for $106

This represents a discount off the regular rate of $168 Please e-mail Sherry Erker, Member Services Manager, for more information at erker@drakeco.com.

Elizabeth Rider and Bob Arnold were quoted in the July 2007 Health Policy, Patient and Practice Issues Section of Infectious Diseases in Children  in the following article:

Shafer E. Doctor-patient communication critical to patient care, expectations often not met: Good communication skills can be learned and should be learned by all physicians. Infectious Diseases in Children; July 2007, Vol 20(7):65.

The article appeared earlier in Hem/Onc Today and can be accessed at:  http://www.hemonctoday.com/200704/care.asp

The changing relationship between communities and their healthcare organizations and professionals holds great promise for the meaningful transformation of healthcare. To develop innovative approaches to promoting health and well-being, we need new and deeper understandings of both individuals-the nature of mind, what motivates us, how our patterns of thinking and behaving form and evolve-and communities-how individuals live together in societies, and the nature of our interdependence. Complexity science, Relationship-centered Care and other theoretical frameworks offer useful new insights in these areas.

This program aims to enhance the engagement of individuals and communities as partners in creating their own health and cultivating healthy communities. Through learning sessions on mindfulness, dialogue skills, complexity science and Relationship-centered Care supplemented by firsthand experience of health systems-community dialogue, participants will develop valuable knowledge, skills and tools to help them foster change in their own communities. The program faculty will include people with expertise in community health issues, complexity science and Relationship-centered Care. Participants will include community members and health care workers, educators and researchers from many disciplines. There will be ample opportunity for participants and faculty to interact in order to:

Explore individual and collective values, beliefs, and experiences about health and healthcare.

Discover key elements and core strategies that support the emergence of health at both the individual and community level.

Learn to apply principles of mindfulness, complexity science, Relationship-centered Care and social networking in fostering community dialogues about health and care.

Create specific action plans and strategies to stimulate change at a local, community, and/or organizational level that can contribute to an epidemic of health and the transformation of healthcare.

Sponsored by Plexus Institute, the American Academy on Communication in Healthcare and the National Academies of Practice

Save the Date!(113K PDF) And stay tuned for more details

An American-Canadian conference to be held October 24-26, 2007 at the University of Minnesota.  Called Collaborating Across Borders: An American-Canadian Dialogue on Interprofessional Health Education.

The conference will bring together leaders in the field to share best practices and chart a course to improve collaboration in health care.

Conference organizers have distributed a call for sessions to seek proposals for four conference tracks.  Those interested in the interprofessional education and collaboration are encouraged to participate in this effort.  Information can be found on the website at www.ipe.umn.edu

The Behavioral Science Column of Medical Encounter is devoted to applying behavioral and social science theories, clinical interventions and research findings to medical practice. Familiarity with the range of psychological treatments enhances the physician's ability to provide optimal care, to address psychophysiological symptoms and to refer the patient for specialized mental health care when necessary. The behavioral science literature on transference, personality styles, trauma, and attachment theory can help inform physician-patient interactions, influence patients' ability to cope with illness, influence adherence, and even affect medical outcomes. If you would like to write an article utilizing the behavioral and social sciences to enhance medical practice or education, I welcome your ideas and submissions. Please submit to the Behavioral Science Editor alyce_getler@hms.harvard.edu. Thank you!

David Steele writes:

 Please consider submitting manuscripts dealing with topics related to medical education and the training of health care professionals for their roles as patient educators and counselors. I am also seeking colleagues who will be willing to serve as peer reviewers of manuscripts. Please contact me at david.steele@med.fsu.edu if you have questions about potential submissions. Patient Education and Counseling seeks to explore and elucidate educational, counseling and communication models in health care. Articles on medical education focus on educational efforts that target experiences, programs and educational research on the teaching/training and evaluation of interpersonal/communication skills of health care providers and the attitudes and skills needed for optimal communication. Submissions are sought for original research and systematic reviews of the literature. Studies employing quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods designs are welcome, as are rigorous systematic reviews of the research literature.

For more information, contact:

David J. Steele, PhD, Assistant Dean for Curriculum and Evaluation; Director, Office of Medical Education

Florida State University College of Medicine

Tallahassee Florida, 32306-4300

850-644-649 or email to

david.steele@med.fsu.edu

Patient Education and Counseling seeks reviewers of papers submitted to the journal for potential publication. If you are interested in becoming a reviewer for this journal on topics related to the study of healthcare communications, please log on to the Elsevier Web site, http://ees.elsevier.com/pec to sign up and e-mail the subjects you'd like to review to Dr. Larry Wissow, Editor, Patient Education and Counseling, at Lwissow@jhsph.edu