Don't forget nominations for the Engel and Payer awards are due July 15.

 

Please remember that all fellowship applications are due by August 1. Information is available on the website.

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.

 

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.

 

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

 

AACH Members Howard Beckman and Beth Lown were quoted in the June Issue of More Magazine. Read the article here.

 

AACH Members, Susan McDaniel (lead researcher) and Howard Beckman's research was published in the June 26 New York Times. Member, Richard Frankel, was also quoted in the article! Read the article here. The research was also featured on the Today show and USA Today!

 

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

 

AACH Board member Elizabeth Rider co-authored a book, A Practical Guide for Teaching and Assessing the ACGME Core Competencies, that was published in May.  AACH member Dan Duffy wrote the Foreword, and AACH President Bill Branch wrote the Concluding Comments.  A number of AACH members contributed resources. The citation is:

 

Rider EA, Nawotniak RH, Smith GD. A Practical Guide for Teaching and Assessing the ACGME Core Competencies. Marblehead, MA: HCPro, Inc., 2007.

View the book is at the following two links:

 

http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Guide-Teaching-Assessing-Competencies/dp/1578399998/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-3215842-7284949?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1182172767&sr=8-1

 

and from the publisher at:  http://www.hcmarketplace.com/prod-5156.html

 

Dear friends and colleagues,   We are happy to inform you that the organization of the t-EACH course (Communication and Change Series) in Venice, Italy is in full swing.   We are looking forward to your participation, so please save the dates September 9-15th, 2007.   The title will be:

"Time: friend or foe in modern healthcare?"

We are planning a highly interactive and experiential course, suitable for people involved in clinical work and/or teaching. All the most innovative ideas about teaching and facilitation will be used during large and small group activities.

Take a break, come to Venice!

Either if you are an experienced clinician/teacher/facilitator or you are in the beginning of your career, you will be very welcome. You will have the opportunity for meeting your various goals, in the fields of skills training, co-facilitation opportunities, personal awareness, relationship building and self-care.   Which place is more suitable for reflection on time and change than Venice, with its timeless, fascinating atmosphere?

And we also succeeded in keeping the prices low!   We can offer you an early-bird rate of 600 euros (before June, 8th), which includes course activities, welcome cocktail and closing dinner. After June, 8th the fee will raise to 850 euros.   If you accept to share your room (2, 3 or 4 beds) we can accommodate you in the course facilities at a very convenient rate, starting from 50 euros up to 65 euros per night per person, breakfast included (limited availability). If you want to stay in a single room, we will send you hotel suggestions.

Take a look at the official website for registration and detailed course information   Course information and registration: http://training.t-each.org

See you in Venice!   The organizing committee:   Siri Steine (Norway) Hans Kallerup (Denmark) Luca Oppizzi (Switzerland) Giovanni Tagliavini (Italy) Peter Barnett (USA)

 

 

When:		Sun, Jul 22, 2007 to Tue, Jul 24, 2007
Where:		Circle S Ranch Lawrence,,  Kansas USA

 

Join us to explore how complexity science informs learning, leading, practice and research in today's rapidly evolving environments where interactions and relationships are more important than ever. Many elements of complexity science are intuitive. But the mathematical and biological systems research and scholarship that underlie its principles can be daunting. Come to this illuminating session where faculty with deep understanding of complexity and skill in the art of explaining it can help us all make sense what this new science means in our lives and work. Learn, share and connect with colleagues who work in similar and different fields of endeavor and are deeply curious about complexity science and the profound implications it holds for how leading, teaching and research are understood and approached.   This workshop is designed for those new to complexity science and those who have been studying for years and want to learn more.

 

OF INTEREST TO AACH MEMBERS

 

 

Research for Patient Safety: Annual Meeting of the Advisory Council

 

The second Advisory Council for Research meeting was hosted at the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality (AHRQ) on 1 May 2007. The Council endorsed the collaborative approach currently being employed by the Alliance Research Programme, encouraging an active policy of research dissemination and recognizing the importance of regional and country cooperation.

OF INTEREST TO AACH MEMBERS

Caring for patients with cancer is a challenge, both intellectually and emotionally. Medical education is good at teaching the technical aspects of diagnosis and treatment but there are other important aspects of patient care that cannot be gleaned from a textbook or a lecture.

 

The film and CDROM study guide offer participants a better understanding of the "in-illness experience," by hearing stories, firsthand, from actual patients living with incurable cancer. We hear what is often unspoken-fears, hopes, expectations, frustrations, and perceptions of us: their professional caregivers.

 

The University of Vermont designates this educational activity for a maximum of 2 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits TM. Physicians should only claim credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

 

 

 

Buddhist Retreat Center
Ixopo, Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa

Neil Prose & Louis van Loon
August 3-5

This workshop explores the relationship between a focused moment to moment awareness and the ability to communicate with patients and their families in an empathic fashion.  A significant part of the weekend retreat will be devoted to learning and practicing breathing and walking meditation.  In addition, we will discuss and practice specific techniques for communicating with patients.  Our aim will be to learn better how to "pay attention" so that we can actually hear and intuit what the ill are trying to tell us, understand what they are feeling and respond in an emphatic and helpful fashion.

 

Anyone who might be planning a trip to South Africa this summer and interested in this seminar should contact Neil Prose at prose001@mc.duke.edu for more information.

 

The Consciousness and Experiential Section of the British Psychological Society is hosting a conference called,

"Reflection, Self-Actualization and Awareness," 14th - 16th September, 2007.

Conference themes include the practical, therapeutic, developmental and philosophical aspects as well as biological bases of self-awareness and reflection.

Their call for proposals is on the CEP website at: http://www.bps.org.uk/conex/consciousness-experiential_home.cfm.

Submission deadlines: Papers and symposia 30th June 2007; posters 14th July 2007.

 

OF INTEREST TO AACH MEMBERS

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

OF INTEREST TO AACH MEMBERS

This 1-day course offers the opportunity to learn about an innovative pedagogy for 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 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 a Pre-Course of the Harvard Macy Institute Program for Educators in the Health Professions and was developed by faculty leaders at the Institute for Professionalism and Ethical Practice at Children's Hospital, Boston.

 

2008 Course Dates:  Saturday, January 12, 2008; Saturday, May 17, 2008, 2:00 - 8:15 pm

 

Cost and Location: Tuition is $425.  Spaces are limited. The course will be held in Boston, MA USA.

 

Register online at:

http://www.harvardmacy.org and click on the course listing on the left side of your screen.

 

For more information, please contact: