Process Communication Model: Surgeons trying to communicate better?!

The Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, via their Professional Development area are running a course that can only benefit, well, all of us!  The Process Communication Model course involves reflecting on one’s own communication style, analysing your colleagues as well as your own communication styles under stress, and aims provide attendees with skills to better manage conflict.

“About time!” I hear you say.  Surgeons have long been ridiculed for their poor communication, and we have all been in trauma resuscitations, in theatre , in a cubicle with a patient or on the end of the phone with a surgeon who has communicated poorly, which invariably leads to heightened levels of distress for those on the receiving end.

Without knowing the full details of the course (or the company that runs it), I would still suggest that any effort to raise situational awareness, and awareness of others’ needs, to better manage conflict and improve communication should be applauded.

It still bothers me that as a profession we are still operating in “silos”, where different specialties take up different causes (or courses) in the name of improving non-technical skills, (eg ACME, CCrISP, PCM, ATTT, EMAC),when in fact we could all benefit from one unified process and language.  Should RRM fulfil this role? Are we doomed to fail by approaching stressful medical situations with different perspectives, different priorities, and different training? Or is something better than nothing?

I don’t think there’s any evidence that medical short courses of any kind improve anything, but at least the surgeons have recognised that communication is a problem, and are making a serious, concerted effort to address it.

Here’s one surgeons appraisal of the course. For him it was life-changing.

What do you think? Leave a comment below.

2 Responses to Process Communication Model: Surgeons trying to communicate better?!