Greetings!

Would you like to post an item on the bulletin board? Send your items to Angela Rickard, AACH Program Coordinator, at rickard@AACHonline.org by the 15th of each month.
Please limit your submissions to 200 words.

President's Report
AACH

The Executive Committee conference call yesterday afternoon was a long and rambling, but thoroughly enjoyable wide ranging discussion of how we define our mission. Our impetus for this discussion was the upcoming Winter Course, where presumably we should focus "training" ourselves and our FITs to accomplish the mission. When all was said and done, I think we pretty much agreed among ourselves on the core activities and goals, though it was nothing startling or even controversial. We do want to expand the short institutional courses. This needs marketing. It may go the route of building relationships with certain institutions, like Park Nicolette and Mayo that share our values and want the kind of training we provide. Institutional Courses tend to focus on helping docs to achieve better patient satisfaction. Personal awareness is certainly a key component, but perhaps more structured than the classic Rogerian group. Maysel had success at a recent course with a type of personal awareness that started by identifying the "hot button" issues of participants, and then explored these using some techniques that I recognize from Balint-type groups. We also have identified a strengthening of the Summer Course, especially by more structured and focused workshops, and these will be offered in three tracks at the next Winter Course at Ghost Ranch. Still, we did come back to the Rogerian PA group as a central component of the Academy. Rogerian PA groups worked well as part of "integrated groups" at the three and one half day Michigan State Summer Course. They are almost always wonderful experiences at the Winter Course. We agreed, Rogerian groups prepare us for whatever more focused and structured exercises we might offer elsewhere. I personally think PA-work is at our core, and skills of all types radiate from PA as we reach out to the larger community of health care workers.

With all best wishes for the Holiday Season,

Bill Branch, President

26th Annual Faculty Development Course
AACH

Strengthening Relationships: Promoting a Culture of Safe Patient Care

Join us in Jacksonville, Florida, USA, for the 26th Annual Faculty Development Course on May 31 - June 4, 2008

Read on...

Save the Date
AACH

AACH Offers Doctor/Patient Relationship Courses

AACH

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.

Subscribe to doc.com today!

AACH

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.

Go to our demonstration Web site

Subscribe to PEC

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.

Note: AACH members subscribing to PEC can access their journal through ScienceDirect. Information that explains how to complete the registration process and who you should contact if you have problems or questions is posted on AACH's Web site, www.AACHonline.org.

To view an online sample copy of PEC

Submit Items to the AACH Community Bulletin Board

AACH

The monthly online AACH Community Bulletin Board is a place for members to share information and ask questions. Please use this membership benefit to facilitate communication, networking and collaboration.

Members are welcome to post the following items:

Meeting, workshop and course announcements
Job postings
Requests for proposals, grant information, informational queries;
Practice, teaching and research questions.
Requests and/or suggestions for collaboration
Helpful resources for practitioners, teachers and patients (print, video, electronic)
Personal announcements and news
Your new publications (citations)
Other listings will be considered

Send your items to AACH Program Coordinator, Angela Rickard, at rickard@AACHonline.org by the 15th of each month. Watch for new items to be posted on the Bulletin Board at the end of each month.

Listings are free for AACH members. Listings are $50 per 200-word listing for non-members or for members who have not renewed.

Please limit your submissions to 200 words.

AACH is interested in sending suggestions for measurable health communication objectives to the Department of Health and Human Services
OF INTEREST TO AACH MEMBERS

If you would like to be involved:
(1) Send specific suggestions to chris@aachonline.org.
(2) Indicate in your email if you are interested in volunteering to participate on a time-limited task force to refine these suggestions. We hope to send our suggestions by the end of November.

Background: The Department of Health and Human Services is in the initial stages of planning for the next set of comprehensive objectives to serve as a framework for disease prevention and health promotion efforts throughout the nation. Healthy People 2020 will build on the efforts of Healthy People 2010 by leveraging the scientific insight and lessons learned during the past decade along with emerging data, trends, and innovations to identify and address the most significant preventable threats to health.

Focus area 11 of Healthy People 2010 was, "Use communication strategically to improve health," and included 6 measurable objectives ranging from increasing internet access in U.S. households, to incresing the proportion of persons who report that their health care providers have satisfactory communication skills. The latter moved away from the targeted goal.

For more information about Health People 2010, please click on this link:
http://odphp.osophs.dhhs.gov/projects/HealthComm/

To date there are no agreed upon health communication objectives in Healthy People 2020.

Thank you.
Beth Lown, MD
Past President, AACH

Patient-Centered Communication in Cancer Care: Promoting Healing and Reducing Suffering

OF INTEREST TO AACH MEMBERS

Effective patient-clinician communication is central to the delivery of high-quality care. It becomes even more crucial in the cancer setting where patients have to deal with stress, uncertainty, complex information, and life-altering medical decisions. To encourage and inform future research that would help facilitate the delivery of patient-centered communication between cancer patients/family and the health care delivery team(s) across the cancer care continuum, the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) has produced a new monograph, Patient-Centered Communication in Cancer Care: Promoting Healing and Reducing Suffering.

The monograph lays the foundation for future innovative research in the area of patient-centered communication in oncology as well as other illness settings. Highlights of the monograph include conceptualization of patient-centered communication into six key functions; emphasis on research that examines the relationship between patient-centered communication and patient health outcomes; detailed discussion of potential mediating and moderating mechanisms of the association between communication and patient outcomes; and identification of specific research priorities that would guide NCI in planning future research initiatives in this important area.

http://outcomes.cancer.gov/areas/pcc/communication/

This was authored by AACH members Ronald Epstein and Richard Street.

For additional information about NCI's projects related to patient-centered communication in cancer care, contact Neeraj K. Arora, Ph.D. at aroran@mail.nih.gov.

Advanced Methods for Organizational Culture Change
OF INTEREST TO AACH MEMBERS

For 10 years, we have been working as organizational change consultants, helping healthcare organizations create relationship-centered work and care environments in which people bring their "whole selves" to work, teamwork flourishes and quality is outstanding. We've evolved a methodology that's proven successful in large scale projects such as changing the informal curriculum of a medical school; establishing a relationship-centered culture at a new hospital (with measurable clinical and financial improvement); and increasing the productivity and creativity of a large credentialing organization.

To expand the community of change agents who are using and further developing these methods, we have created a 10-month leadership institute called Leading Organizations to Health that that offers leading-edge theories, advanced facilitation skills and in-depth personal reflection. LOH combines rigorous formal sessions - 4 weekends of seminars, workshops and personal retreats in a rustic Rocky Mountain conference center - with the longitudinal learning of monthly coaching calls as you apply your learning in ongoing work at home. Previous participants have made profound changes in how they go about their work, achieved results they hadn't thought possible, and experienced a resurgence of hope and joy. For more information, please visit www.RCHCweb.com. We hope you'll join us!

Difficult Conversations in Healthcare: Pedagogy and Practice

OF INTEREST TO AACH MEMBERS

This 1-day course offers the opportunity to learn about an innovative pedagogy for teaching and enhancing relational capacities and communication skills in physicians, social workers, nurses, and other health care professionals at all levels of professional development. We use the PERCS (Program to Enhance Relational and Communication Skills) model of realistic enactments (with professional actors), collaborative learning, and reflection and feedback. We also discuss and consider how participants might usefully integrate the pedagogy into educational endeavors in their home institutions. The course provides teaching and learning strategies for the interpersonal and communication skills and professionalism competencies required by many regulatory organizations including the ACGME and LCME. The course is co-sponsored by the Harvard Macy Institute Program for Educators in the Health Professions and The Institute for Professionalism and Ethical Practice (IPEP), an initiative of the Division of Critical Care Medicine at Children's Hospital Boston, MA USA.

2008 Course Dates: Saturday, January 19, 2008, Saturday, May 17, 2008

Cost and Location: Tuition is $425. The course will be held in Boston, MA USA from 1:00 pm to 7:15 pm on the dates listed.

Register online at:
http://mycourses.med.harvard.edu/pub_forms.asp?sid=HMS_1508 (or paste the URL into your browser). For the full course announcement, go to: http://www.harvardmacy.org and click on the course listing on the left side of your screen.

For more information, please contact:

Elizabeth Rider, MSW, MD, Course Director: elizabeth_rider@hms.harvard.edu

Enhancing the Professional Culture of Schools of Medicine
OF INTEREST TO AACH MEMBERS

Enhancing the Professional Culture of Schools of Medicine:

Indiana University School of Medicine's Relationship-Centered Care Initiative

Immersion Conference III

Request for Applications

April 29 - May 1, 2008

Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN

View the Brochure

Call for Applications

OF INTEREST TO AACH MEMBERS

2008 Summer Institute in Informed Patient Choice:

"Interprofessional Education in Decision Support"

Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA

June 25 - July 2, 2008

The Background Motivation for SIIPC 2008:

Patient-centered care could be improved if the different members of

multidisciplinary health care teams can work together in providing

high-quality Decision Support/Patients' Decision Aids (DS/PtDAs).

Therefore, we need to develop, test, and implement effective, sustainable

interprofessional training programs to teach DS/PtDAs as a clinical skill.

To do this well, we need to build collaborative links between experts in DS

/ PtDAs and experts in inter-professional education.

Applying for a Summer Institute Fellowship:

For application forms and information about the submission process, visit:

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~cecs/cic/2008/index.html and click on

"Applications"

The application deadline is January 15, 2008.

Applicants' submissions will be reviewed by the Planning Committee.

Selected Fellows will be notified in April, 2008.

Fellows will be provided with housing on the Dartmouth campus, some meals,

and course materials.

Supported By:

The Center for Informed Choice at The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy

& Clinical Practice

The Agency for Health Care Research and Quality.*

A Great Publishing Opportunity

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

Do you do work that focuses on communication or relationships in healthcare? Do you have really great ideas, preliminary data, stories, poetry or artwork that you would like to share with like-minded individuals (and some of the leaders in the field of medical communication)? Send your stuff to Medical Encounter!

Medical Encounter is an academic journal of the American Academy on Communication in Healthcare that publishes scholarly and artistic works relating to relationships in healthcare. Medical Encounter reaches patients, practitioners, teachers, researchers, policymakers and leaders in the healthcare environment. Publishing in Medical Encounter is a great way to get early exposure for your work and ideas, and can lend credibility to subsequent efforts at funding and publication.

Check out past issues of Medical Encounter and information for authors on our website at www.aachonline.org/publications/medicalencounter

Behavioral Scientists: Submit to Medical Encounter

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

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!

Call for Narratives on Reflective Practice

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

Patient Education and Counseling, presents a section comprised of selected narratives on reflective practice

Reflective Practice provides a voice for physicians and other healthcare providers, patients and their family members, trainees and medical educators. The title emphasizes the importance of reflection in our learning and how our patient care and own self- care can be improved through reflective practice, similar to other health care provider skills. We welcome personal narratives on caring, patient- provider relationships, humanism in healthcare, professionalism and its challenges, patients' perspectives, and collaboration in patient care and counseling. Most narratives will describe personal or professional experiences that provide a lesson applicable to caring, humanism, and relationship in health care. Submit manuscripts through the Patient Education and Counseling on-line, electronic submission system at http://ees.elsevier.com/pec. Patient Education and Counseling is an international journal indexed in Medline and 13 other related indexes. All manuscripts, including narratives, are peer-reviewed.

If you would like an electronic copy of the editorial describing the Reflective Practice section, "Sharing Stories: Narrative Medicine in an Evidence-Based World", please e-mail David Hatem, MD <HatemD@ummhc.org> or Elizabeth Rider, MSW, MD <elizabeth_rider@hms.harvard.edu>

Editors:

US: David Hatem, MD, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA USA

Elizabeth A. Rider, MSW, MD, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA USA

Europe: Shmuel Reis MD, MHPE, Technion [Israel Institute of Technology], Haifa, Israel

Submit manuscript...

Call for Manuscripts and Reviewers for PEC

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

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@ttuhsc.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, Senior Associate Dean for Medical Education

Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, Paul L. Foster School of Medicine

4800 Alberta Avenue, El Paso, TX 79905

David.steele@ttuhsc.edu

PEC Peer Reviewers Needed

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

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

Read on...

DISCLAIMER

The AACH Community Bulletin Board may contain advertisements and links to third party web sites, services, or content references. These are not under our control and we are not responsible for any linked third party web sites or for the content, products and/or services they provide. Your use of these services, content, products, and linked web sites is at your risk and subject to the terms and conditions, the providers specify for their use. Unless expressly stated by us, we do not recommend or endorse the content, particular products, services or web sites of any third parties or make any determination whether these may be accurate, necessary or appropriate for you or for your use in educational activities or rendering care to patients.