Beyond Words: Leveraging Patients' and Families' Perspectives to Improve Healthcare Communication

Effective communication is a cornerstone of healthcare, fostering trust, understanding, and collaboration between patients, families, and providers. The ABP Future of Certification Summit underscored the need to explore expanding training and assessments of communication in medicine and the vital role of patients and families in the innovation process. However, teaching and assessing these skills is challenging.

The ABP developed a method to productively glean patients' and families' perceptions of effective communication from lived experiences in overall medical practice, different care settings, and specific circumstances. Participants identified key traits and components within each context, resulting in a comprehensive framework that may help inform training and assessment rubric development, professional guidance, and research.

This method's outcomes demonstrate a collaborative strategy for gathering valuable information from care recipients within a clear scope to inform the medical community's approach to assessment, learning, and developing improvement metrics.

This session will outline and simulate the method used by the ABP to engage patients and families productively. Attendees will learn key components of effective communication applicable across healthcare and within specific contexts and be equipped to effectively leverage patients' and families' perspectives in innovative processes, ultimately leading to better outcomes.