PECH 2101
COMMUNICATION SKILLS & HEALTHCARE INTERACTIONS
General Aim
This course will help students to:
- Engage discussion on issues of communication in healthcare settings;
- Apply effective oral and written communication across a range of forms necessary to the health profession;
- Acquire practical guidelines on effective communication especially for interviews, history taking and health promotion.
Specific Learning Objectives
This course will specifically allow students to:
- Learn the significance of the interview in the health professional-client medical consultation;
- Acquire guidelines on effective medical consultation;
- Assess examples of various medical consultations by health professionals portrayed in the media;
- Acquire effective history taking skills;
- Properly construct patient profiles;
- Develop an appropriate strategy and use technology to convey a message to a mass audience;
- Examine the role of behaviour change in healthcare and the healthcare system;
- Assess the role of health professionals as healthcare advocates.
- Cognitive skills. The knowledge base of the profession.
- Technical skills.
- Social or Communication skills. The ability of
the individual to interact effectively with others in the professional
context.
Upon
successful completion of this course, students will be able to perform core
communicative duties required in healthcare interactions. They will also learn
about health promotion and advocacy and be able to use appropriate strategies
and technology to convey messages to clients, other healthcare professionals
and the wider public. This course will use a skills approach to the application
of effective communication principles in health settings.
Instructional Strategies
This course will take a skills-based approach. Large group lectures will engage students with significant use of multimedia and be highly interactive. Other sessions will allow students to participate in various practical exercises relevant to the skills addressed in the large group.