The Encounter. Online clinical communication, for allied health clinicians
An online course that mixes theory and practice. You explore a range of strategies and principles for the consultation, then try them out with simulated patients who respond to what you actually say, in a safe space, with thorough feedback on what you did and your own words as the evidence.
You will not leave with a script. You will leave knowing which of six things you can do with more than one kind of person, which one you lose under pressure, and what you actually said when you lost it.
Pilot places are limited and go to the waitlist first. Leave your details and we will email you when they open. This is not a booking and there is nothing to pay now.
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Most of us have a handful of lines that work. The difficulty is that the same sentence lands well with one person and badly with the next, and there is usually no warning about which one you are in.
We can learn good ways of explaining things, asking questions, sitting with uncertainty, helping someone work towards a change. We still have to work out what is useful with the person in front of us. The encounters do not ask you to find the right sentence. They give you a safe place to try different strategies with someone who responds to what you actually say, and thorough feedback on what your words did.
The lecture material explores a range of strategies and principles to use in practice, so you are not relying on a script or a set line that lands well with one person and badly with the next. The aim is the confidence and the skills to work with uncertainty, and with the different ways a consultation can go from person to person. The encounters are where you practise that.
You speak with a simulated person living with persistent pain. They have things they believe, things they are worried about, and things they will not tell you straight away. There is no particular conversation you are supposed to have. You listen, you respond, you work out where to go next. It is a safe place to try a different strategy and see what it does.
You score your own conversation first. What you noticed, where you got stuck, what you think you did well. Then you compare that against the assessment, and the gap between the two is one of the things being trained. During your baseline you do not see the rubric at all.
Feedback on each competency, built around the factors the evidence points to as mattering most for patient outcomes, with the parts of your own conversation it was based on and one thing you could try instead. You also see what was happening for the person that you could not see at the time, including what moved their fear, their trust and their readiness. The point is not the number. It is having something specific to try differently next time.
The course runs across eight modules in Teachable, mixing lecture material with five simulated encounters, each with a new constraint. You work through them at your own pace. The first encounter is a baseline you complete before we have taught you anything.
Knowing the material is not the same as being able to use it while someone is talking to you. The competencies are assessed from what you actually did, against published behavioural anchors, and the assessment shows you the parts of your conversation it used. So you can check it rather than take it on trust.
Doing it well with one person can be a good match between your habits and theirs. We only count it as a competency when you have shown it with two people who make it hard in different ways. Each simulated person brings something different into the room, and what works easily with one can get you nowhere with another.
We do not claim this course changes anyone's pain, disability or function, and we do not claim a score here predicts how you perform with real patients. Neither has been shown, by us or by anyone. What we assess is what happened in a simulated conversation, and we say so on the page rather than in a footnote.
Pilot places are half price, A$199. After the pilot the course is A$399. Both prices include GST.
In return, you are a beta tester for the tools and the activities. That means a short set of feedback questions after each encounter. It is the one extra task, and it is how the course gets better before it opens to everyone.
The pilot
Online and on demand, at your own pace
Limited places, at half price
Open for two weeks once places are released
Dates are not set yet. The waitlist hears first, and there is nothing to pay until places open.
Not yet. We are working on accreditation with some governing bodies. In the meantime you can usually still claim your points and time through your own body, and we provide the documentation it asks for. Requirements differ between bodies, so check what yours needs.
For most people, yes. Registration bodies and professional associations set their own requirements for self directed learning, and most let you claim the time and the points.
We provide the documentation: a dated record of what you did, what you practised and what was assessed. Check what your body asks for, because requirements differ.
We do not know, and we are not claiming it. Communication training trials show small effects on patient outcomes, and no trial has tested this course.
What we measure is what happened in a simulated conversation. That is a real thing to know about yourself. It is not the same thing as knowing your patients did better.
A language model reads your transcript against the same published anchors a human marker would use, and every score comes with the part of the conversation it was based on, so you can inspect it.
What we have not done yet is the reliability study comparing the model's scoring against independent clinician ratings of the same transcripts. Until that is run, treat a score as a structured assessment against the rubric with the evidence attached, and not as a validated measure. We will publish the results when we have them, including if they are worse than we would like.
You start with a baseline consultation, before we have taught you anything or shown you the rubric. There is no preparing for it. You just have the conversation, and then we have somewhere to start.