Interpersonal & Communication Skills

DocCom Module 8: Gather Information

You greatly improve your patients’ outcomes when you jointly construct the story of the illness, weaving the patient’s elaboration of the biomedical and psychosocial threads together with your own hypotheses. This module explores the primary goals of information gathering, which…

DocCom Module 7: Open the Discussion

Patients usually present to primary care offices with an average of three concerns. Elicitation of all of the patient’s symptoms and concerns in the ambulatory and in-patient setting requires little additional time and diminishes the likelihood of late arising concerns…

DocCom Module 6: Build a Relationship

A positive doctor-patient relationship is the key to medical care.  Substantial evidence indicates that a relationship of trust and respect promotes better adherence to treatment recommendations, better physical and emotional outcomes and the disclosure of patients’ hidden concerns. Furthermore, the…

DocCom Module 4: Balance and Self Care

Medical education and the medical profession are stressful endeavors, with high rates of burnout and mental health problems, including substance abuse. We will be satisfied and effective clinicians only if we find healthy methods for coping with stress. We cannot…

DocCom Module 3: Therapeutic Aspects of Medical Encounters

Clinician patient encounters are therapeutic in and of themselves, independently of diagnostic and therapeutic activities of proven effectiveness. This module identifies the therapeutic elements of clinical encounters, so the learner can be intentional about maximizing these elements with patients. These…

Beyond Informed Consent

Informed Consent continues to be a source of medical error and medical malpractice claims. Obtaining consent is sometimes delegated to someone other than the physician performing the procedure; it is sometimes reduced to obtaining a signature on a piece of…

Physician Health and Quality of Care: Who Heals the Healer?

Recent large-scale surveys of physicians show high numbers of respondents endorsing statements of stress and burnout. This video presentation by an emergency medicine physician examines the quantifiable effects of physician stress on the physician’s physiology and on the patient’s quality…

Retinal Tears: Risk Issues in General Ophthalmology

Conditions of the retina including retinal tears are the conditions most commonly associated with medical malpractice claims against general ophthalmologists. This monograph will provide an overview of ophthalmology claims, a closed claim analysis of a case of retinal detachment, the…

Cardiothoracic Surgery Risk and Claims

The number of cardiothoracic (CT) surgeons is declining, and there is a projected shortage by 2035. At the same time, CT surgery continues to be a high-risk specialty for those practicing it. This activity looks at trends in CT surgery…