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Communication Skills for Child Health Care Professionals
Overview
Behavioral health concerns among children are very common, yet fewer than half of parents or caregivers report such concerns to children’s primary care providers. Even when parents report concerns and receive referrals for mental health services, nearly 40% of such referrals are never completed.
Health care professionals routinely face difficulties engaging the caregivers of children with emotional and behavioral difficulties. Active listening, empathic responses, and well-timed, tactfully delivered, open-ended questions are effective skills that professional helpers can cultivate to engage caregivers and children in optimal treatment.
Provider training in communication skills has a profound and positive impact on parental disclosure of children’s behavioral health concerns and on every phase of treatment and management.
The REACH Institute and the Institute for Healthcare Communication have collaborated to create this innovative training program for pediatric providers. It is designed to give pediatric providers stronger skills and greater confidence managing children’s mental health issues such as ADHD and other related behavioral-emotional disorders. This one-day communication skills training program will provide pediatric clinicians with hands-on coaching to increase their skills in working with children and families with ADHD and other mental health disorders.
This program is in development. For further information please contact us at info@healthcarecomm.org.
- Duration 1 Day
- Accreditation Approved for CE
- Available To Clinicians
- Course InformationDownload PDF
Audience
This brief, intense and interactive program is targeted toward active and direct providers of pediatric medical care or mental health care: physicians, nurse practitioners, psychologists, clinical social workers and others in caregiving or counseling professions.
Content
The focus of the program is how to employ core communication skills to more effectively engage child patients with behavioral health needs and their caregivers. These core skills include:
- Active listening,
- Empathic statements,
- Nonverbal communication, and
- Open-ended questions
Faculty will demonstrate role-play exercises based on vignettes drawn from actual patients’ and families’ narratives. Learners will participate in role-plays in small groups, facilitated by a triad of a mental health professional, a primary care professional and a parent. The small group sessions are designed to give learners a safe and supportive environment in which they can practice specific skills, with expert facilitation and group feedback.
Skills practice will encompass the full range of clinical encounters, from initial engagement, through active information-sharing and eventual shared decision-making.
Learning Objectives
Learning objectives for participants include their ability to:
1. Cite three common barriers to effective clinician-patient communication around mental health,
2. Describe four communication skills for effective engagement with patients/caregivers, and
3. Describe the process for shared decision-making with patients/caregivers.
Methodology
Participants in this communication skills training conference will learn about, observe, and receive hands-on practice in the essential skills for working with patients and their caregivers. We will employ varied teaching methodologies, with an emphasis on active learning. There will be didactic learning through a plenary panel of experts who will introduce key concepts around pediatric mental health and communication skills, demonstrations of key skills and small group experiential learning opportunities for practicing skills with expert facilitation.
Faculty
Course leadership is shared by Peter Jensen, MD, founder of the REACH Institute, Kathleen Bonvicini, MPH, EdD, chief executive officer of the Institute for Healthcare Communication (IHC), and David L. Kaye, M.D., medical director, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry for Primary Care (CAPPC) Program. Presenters and small group facilitators include mental health professionals, primary care professionals and parent partners, all trained by the REACH Institute or IHC.
CME
The University at Buffalo is accredited by the ACCME to sponsor CME for physicians. The UB School of Medicine & Biomedical Sciences designates this live activity for a maximum of 6.5 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.