Developing communication skills training in 5 educational programs

Understanding the ability to communicate with patients as a central clinical skill, the importance of developing communication teaching in healthcare educations is obvious.
Following the establishment of a room specially equipped for training communication skills in 2010, implementation of communication skills training in 5 healthcare educations at University College North Denmark has been a focus for a committed group of teachers. In order to encourage the implementation process, courses in facilitation has been offered to teachers from all five healthcare education programmes: nursing, occupational therapy, radiography, midwifery and physiotherapy.
The courses focused on the skills needed to facilitate training of communication skills. Participants trained the use of descriptive feedback, role playing, video recording, actors and re-rehearsal in small groups for communication teaching. The participants highly appreciated the possibility to explore and try out different aspects of the facilitator role, and found practicing challenging, but rewarding. They also gained valuable knowledge from colleagues across programmes, and specified a continuous need for giving and receiving supervision.
As a result of the combination of easy access to technical resources in the dedicated room and the opportunity to continuously develop the facilitation skills needed to train students, communication skills training has been integrated in the curriculum of all five healthcare educational programmes.