Helping Clinicians Become Better Communicators: A Skill Not Taught in Medical School

About Project

The Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC) is proud to submit its Communication Skills for Serious Illness Conversations clinical training unit for consideration for the 2024 MarCom Awards. As a national organization dedicated to increasing the availability of quality, equitable health care for people living with a serious illness, CAPC provides health care professionals and organizations with the training, tools, and technical assistance to effectively meet this need.
To bring its mission to life, CAPC relaunched its online, interactive communication skills courses in March 2024. Everything we want for our patients—better outcomes, better quality of life, higher patient satisfaction, fewer hospital readmissions, and more equitable care—starts with building trusting relationships between patients, their caregivers, and the care team. This requires that clinicians from all specialties and disciplines, including physicians, advanced practice providers, nurses, social workers, and chaplains, have effective communication skills—a skill that is not taught in medical school.
This new online clinical training unit provides clinicians with techniques to discuss serious news and prognosis; have effective conversations about goals of care and care planning; and facilitate decision-making in meetings with patients and caregivers. It is available to CAPC members, who can earn continuing education credits (for physicians, nurses, social workers, and care managers). Free ABIM Maintenance of Certification credits are also available for physicians. By taking the new courses, clinicians:
• Benefit from the expertise of the course authors, Diane E. Meier, MD, and Drew Rosielle, MD, in partnership with VitalTalk, who developed the curriculum based on evidence-based best practices
• Observe complete patient-clinician conversations, experiencing a story-based approach with familiar characters
• Experience interactive elements, including patient stories, illustrations, and practice opportunities using scripts, videos, and guides
• Actively practice communication techniques and receive frequent expert feedback that will guide your progression
• Feel more confident having challenging conversations with patients and families
The launch of these courses was a multi-year effort, which involved the expertise of many subject matter experts, instructional and web designers, and more; rewriting and redesigning all courses to make sure that they included the most up-to-date evidence-based best practices; updating and testing the content within the learning management system; rewriting all copy and ensuring that it was SEO optimized; repackaging and rebuilding all resources; recommending targeted content through learning pathways; applying for approvals from continuing education accreditation boards; promoting the new courses, and much more.
Feedback from the field has been positive, as has site performance and utilization of resources. Since its launch:
- The new courses have been taken over 26,500 times
- Over 3,200 clinicians have completed the full unit, achieving CAPC Designation for Communication Skills
While the Communication Skills courses are available for all to view, you must be a member to take the courses and engage with the content. To explore the courses fully as a CAPC member, we invite judges to use the login credentials below.
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