UC San Diego Training 

For healthcare providers who work at UC San Diego, we have divided our UC San Diego-affiliated sessions into two categories: CLINICAL and RESEARCH. You might choose to follow one path, or mix and match, based on your group interests.  

Clinical and Team Foundational Workshop

The 30,000-Foot View 

This session introduces our foundational framework of compassionate listening and reinforces the importance of knowing your audience, your goal, and yourself. The session introduces a team conflict and helps you recognize a simple process to step away from snap judgment and into conscious connection with others.  

By the end of this session, you can expect to: 

• Recognize the impact of assumptions on team dynamics 
• Identify tools to expand perspective 
• Discuss preparation strategies for difficult conversations  

Speak Plainly  

Communication about medicine is emotional and complicated. It requires us to make conscious choices to connect to become more responsive to the needs of your patients and their families. This 45–90-minute session will draw on techniques in journalism to help you recognize the needs of your listener to shape your message into clear, conversational language. 

By the end of this session, you can expect to: 

• Recognize the perspective of your listener 
• Define and translate technical language into clear, impactful messages 
• Understand the impact of ordering information 

The Clinical Story: Rethinking the Process 

Despite participating in hundreds of clinical encounters, we are sometimes left with the nagging feeling that something did not go “right”. This 60-90-minute in-person fishbowl session is meant to provide an environment to revisit the steps and process of a clinical encounter using our compassionate communication approach. We will determine what communication skills we can tweak to improve the outcome for ourselves and our patients.  

By the end of this session, you can expect to:

• Understand critical steps in the process of the clinical encounter 
• Identify personal communication challenges 
• Practice specific skills using our framework with roleplay 

Engaging with Differences 

Engaging with differences, otherwise known as leaning into conflict, is challenging, and yet can be very rewarding by enhancing relationships and outcomes. It is an important communication skill to achieve optimal shared decision-making with patients and effective teamwork with colleagues. This 90-minute session will include a self-assessment tool, group discussion and roleplay. 

By the end of the session, you can expect to: 

• Take stock of the situation and decide whether to engage; know your tendencies; avoid climbing the “ladder of inference"; do your best to create psychological safety; and ultimately create a partnership  
• Evaluate your baseline conflict management style and discuss situations which may require the need to adapt your style  
• Describe the concept of psychological safety and brainstorm ways to create it at different stages of teamwork 
• Practice creating a partnership in tense scenarios by finding the third story

Sharing Serious News 

The phrase “breaking bad news” can have a negative connotation of causing harm. Since we know truth-telling is fundamental to healthcare, and withholding or sugarcoating difficult information can cause harm, we prefer the phrase “sharing serious news.” This three-hour emotional curriculum can serve as a framework for sharing important information, and we will work on how to do this challenging task with compassion. This in-person workshop will include large and small group discussion, roleplay, and written reflection. 

By the end of the session, you can expect to: 

• Recognize the importance of inquiry and advocacy to understand emotion in a devastating clinical encounter 
• Practice ordering information with the headline and holding empathetic space to allow patients to move into a new reality in the face of devastating news 
• Demonstrate an ability to address and understand personal emotions in delivering serious or bad news 
• Describe successful techniques used in the past 

Communicating my Research 

If you struggle with jargon and explaining technical language, we suggest you begin with Speak Plainly. If you are a more experienced science communicator, you can proceed to The Big Idea or Finding the Story. 

The Big Idea 

This 60-90-minute session helps you structure a clear, simple, audience-specific message to relay your ideas, needs, research, or complicated information. The session allows you to practice as a team before using the BIG IDEA tool to craft your own message. We recommend that prior to the session you identify a topic that you struggle to communicate so you can workshop new ways of sharing old information. 

By the end of this session, you can expect to: 

• Appreciate the main point you need to relay
• Identify and build on the common ground between you and your audience 
• Practice using a tool to structure your message effectively         

Finding the Story 

Story is one of the most impactful ways of communicating. Our What's the Story form and the processes introduced in this 90-minute session will help you craft a story about your research or work that can be used as a model for longer or shorter presentations to a variety of audiences, including leaders, funders, the media, and the public. 

By the end of this session, you can expect to: 

• Identify the message that will most effectively impact your audience 
• Prepare your message into a story structure 
• Give and receive peer feedback 

Online Modules

Our online learning modules are hosted on the Coursera platform. Please find the following courses linked below:

• "A New Communication Framework for Healthcare"
• "Communicating with the Public"

How do I book a session?  

Please complete our Workshop Inquiry form to describe your communication challenges or the workshop/modules you would like to learn. We will contact you with follow-up details.