Communications Skills Course: Effective conversations for pain clinicians
This communications skills course is designed to turn difficult pain clinic consultations into positive conversations using a wide variety of educational techniques, including medical actors. Suitable for anaesthetists and pain clinicians of all levels and experience.
This course is designed to turn difficult pain clinic consultations into positive conversations.
Participants will learn skills which will help manage controversial scenarios, such as de-prescribing, avoiding interventions and dealing with angry and upset patients, whilst empowering patients to self-manage their pain. The course will use a wide variety of educational techniques, including medical actors, making it highly interactive, practical and fun.
The day is suitable for anaesthetists and pain clinicians of all levels and experience.
Learning objectives:
- To support behaviour change in daily practice
- To encourage patients to solve their own problems
- To reduce confrontation
- To improve clinician and patient satisfaction from consultations
- To champion and smooth the transition to non-medical services
The course content aligns with national priorities, which include sharing decision making, personalising care and reducing reliance on dependence-forming medications, informed by the following documents:
- NHS long term plan
- NHSE universal personalised care
- Shared decision making
- Reducing medication/deprescribing
- Opioids aware
Course Format
The content of the course is based on evidence from the Health Foundation co-creating health initiative.
The day starts with the background to the course and the relevance of considering new communication and consultation skills.
We then cover 4 essential elements of the consultation in sequence, describing and demonstrating key skills. We explore readiness to change, agreeing an agenda for the consultation, problem solving and following up. Skills include elements from coaching and motivational interviewing.
The afternoon is devoted to practicing skills with professional actors, using genuine and difficult pain clinic scenarios.
Feedback from previous courses:
- Great insight to exploring new skills to use with patients
- Good start eg not jumping in with referral reason
- A much needed course
- Hopefully it will become a regular feature
- Practicing the techniques repeatedly really helped consolidate the theory
- Very useful day overall
- Has provided a framework to take away and use in practice.
- The amount of practice.
- Good content
- Did very well to condense into a 1 day course
- I think this course should be a compulsory component of advanced pain training- very useful.
- Useful introduction of framework.
- In general a very strong course
- The facilitators were knowledgeable
- The course was kept relevant to pain medicine
- Important that the course was face to face
- Overall excellent, better than I expected. I highly recommend and feel it is an essential course
Facilitators: Helen Makins, Dimple Vyas, Allistair Dodds and Sheila Black
| Time | Format | Title |
| 09:15-10:00 | Lecture/groups |
Phase 1: Exploring:
|
| 10:00-10:30 | Lecture/groups |
Phase 2: Planning:
|
| 10:30-10:50 | Break | |
| 10:50-11:20 | Lecture/ groups |
Phase 2: Planning:
|
| 11:20-12:00 | Lecture/ groups |
Phase 3: Problem Solving:
|
| 12.00 - 12.30 | Lecture/ groups |
Phase 4: Follow up:
|
| 12:30-13:30 | Lunch break | |
|
13:30-16:20 (15:30 Break) |
Actor scenarios |
Putting skills into clinical practice |
| 16:20-16:40 | Small Groups | Next steps for personal practice and reflecting on objectives |
| 16:40-17:00 | Further learning | |
Programme subject to change.
Pricing
| Member/ Fellow |
Trainee/ Nurse |
Non Member |
|---|---|---|
| £285 | £215 | £355 |
If a delegate wishes to cancel their place at an event they will need to send a written request to the relevant team, contact details below. It is the responsibility of the delegate to ensure the written request is received by the relevant team. The written request will be time stamped upon receipt and the delegate will receive a response by e-mail, outlining their options. The money paid to register for the event will be returned to delegates in accordance with the schedule below:
| Notice given by delegate | Amount refundable |
| More than 10 working days before the start of the event |
100% refund - minus the administration charge of £45* |
| Less than and including, 10 working days before the start of the event |
No refund available Unless the RCoA, FICM and FPM consider there to be exceptional circumstances |
*All events with a registration price of less than £100 will be exempt from the administration charge.
If you fail to attend the event you are registered for and do not notify us in writing more than 10 working days in advance, we will be unable to offer a refund. Personal arrangements including travel, accommodation or hospitality relating to the event which have been arranged by you are at your own risk. The FPM shall not be liable for any loss of enjoyment or wasted expenditure in the event of a delegate not attending an event.