Clinical Communication Skills For Healthcare Professionals (FutureLearn)

Learning from real patient and healthcare professional’s experiences, you’ll discover how effective clinical communication skills can reduce complaints, improve the patient experience, and boost your confidence and wellbeing.

Gain essential communication skills

Self awareness is key in helping you become an effective communicator. You’ll reflect on your emotional intelligence, acknowledging your unconscious bias, to understand how to grow your self awareness.

You’ll also develop your listening skills, including active and empathetic listening, to ensure you understand the other person’s experience.

Develop your verbal and non-verbal communication skills

Communication comes in many forms, both verbal and non-verbal. To help you become a well-rounded communicator, this course will help you develop both.

You’ll gain verbal communication skills to ensure you speak honestly and clearly before exploring the functions of non-verbal communication such as body language and eye contact.

Learn to overcome the barriers to communication in healthcare

Finally, you’ll learn how to address the barriers you may face in communication in healthcare. You’ll learn how to use the skills gained on this course to overcome these barriers and deliver safer, person-centred care.

Guided by healthcare experts, you’ll finish with the clinical communication skills to apply to your healthcare context.

Syllabus

Week 1: Communication: Skills, Emotions and Active Listening

Week 2: Communication: Verbal and Non-verbal

What will you achieve?

By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to...

- Explore the concept of active listening skills, understanding the other person's experience

- Reflect on and improve verbal communication skills, aiming to speak with clarity, accuracy and honesty

- Reflect on and improve non-verbal communication skills including body language, eye contact and facial expressions

- Develop emotional intelligence in communication and uncovering our unconscious bias

- Apply relevant communication skills to develop compassionate relationships with others and deliver safer person-centred care

- Explore communication techniques for effective team communication

Who is the course for?

This course is designed for healthcare professionals who want to develop their clinical communication skills to improve their working clinical relationships with others.

It will be suitable for pre-registration students, students studying healthcare courses, and qualified staff who have an interest in improving their clinical communication skills.

The course is based on practices within the UK but is also applicable to health professionals globally.