TNMU Teachers Participated in Advanced Training Courses to Enhance Communication Skills

From February 8 to March 31, 2022, Ternopil National Medical University hosted advanced training courses for researchers and teachers “How to teach students to communicate (patient-oriented approach, features of medical counseling).” The event of professional development was attended by 40 university educators from clinical and theoretical departments with different teaching experience.

The courses were organized by Department for Internal Assurance of Higher Education Quality and a working group of teachers who participated in international trainings on communication in the medical environment, have facilitation skills and are the developers of the course “Humanity and Empathy in the Work of Medical Practitioner” within the Ukrainian-Swiss project “Development of Medical Education in Ukraine”, namely Nataliia Haliiash, Oksana Sydorenko, Iryna Borovyk and Sofiia Husak.

In order to improve important communication skills, the organizers conducted a series of practical classes, during which all participants had the opportunity to improve their communication skills and master modern tools for teaching medical students. During the course, the main basic techniques of effective communication, the rules of non-verbal and verbal communication were developed, the issues of barriers that arise in communication were revealed. Particular attention was paid to the issue of feedback, which is a constructive tool in assessing students and plays a key role in personal professional development. Each participant had the opportunity to practice giving and receiving feedback. The participants were very interested in the lesson, which addressed the issue of personal boundaries, their types, building healthy boundaries in the work with students and patients. The last meeting of the training course was quite emotional, as it discussed the concepts of compassion, sympathy and empathy. As an effective tool for communication in difficult situations, it was proposed to use the E-V-E protocol, and if necessary to report bad news – the SPIKES protocol. At each meeting, the issue of human-centeredness in all areas of teaching was emphasized.

The courses took place in a hybrid format, face-to-face and remotely, thanks to which it was possible to demonstrate modern interactive pedagogical tools offline and online. It was work in small groups, case analysis and discussion, general discussion, group discussion, role play, stories of real clinical and pedagogical cases (storytelling), icebreaker. Such digital tools as Menti, Padlet, Google slides, Google forms were used.

Each session featured a Google presentation with mandatory group and individual assignments, check-in, case studies, teaching aids, tutorials, videos, and useful links.

In this way, each participant of the training courses had the opportunity to take an active part, express their opinions and discuss. This contributed to a friendly atmosphere where all participants felt on equal terms and had the opportunity to share experiences on the principle of horizontal learning. It is a well-known fact that adult education is more effective when it is based on joint decision-making and involves the exchange of experiences. Moreover, the individual needs of each educator were taken into account, so additional materials for independent, asynchronous learning were sent to everyone. In them, all participants of the event can find additional information that is relevant in their practice.

Courses have been completed, certificates have been prepared, all materials have been sent. We look forward to receiving feedback from colleagues to see where to go next. We hope that the pedagogical training courses will help to improve the communicative competence of our students and increase the efficiency of the educational process as a whole.

We are also happy to invite colleagues who liked this interactive working mode to join our Peer Groups, which have been successfully operating at our university for over a year. Teachers of these pedagogical training courses are facilitators of Peer Groups.

You can sign up for the peer group at the Department for Internal Assurance of Higher Education Quality and at the facilitators at the following addresses: nhaliyash@tdmu.edu.ua, sydorenko@tdmu.edu.ua, borovic@tdmu.edu.ua, husak_sr@tdmu.edu.ua

We continue working for the victory of Ukraine!

Thank you to all course participants! We wish everyone a peaceful sky!

Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the heroes!

The information was prepared and submitted by the course teachers.