Ensuring Effective Communication as Healthcare Professionals

This communication skills course for healthcare professionals starts from a simple point: patients rarely see your knowledge directly, but they always notice whether they were listened to and told the truth. Communication failures run through serious incidents, complaints and fitness to practise cases, and many complaints arise not from clinical error but from how people felt they were spoken to.

Over about two hours the course builds practical skills: letting patients finish their opening statement, teach-back and chunk-and-check, structuring bad news with SPIKES, shared decision-making with BRAN, working with professional interpreters, remote consultations, and team tools such as SBAR, closed-loop communication and agreed escalation phrases. It then sets out each regulator's communication standard and how to remediate a communication concern.

It is self-paced on our course portal, with scenarios, reflection points, 15 assessment questions and a written reflective account. A certificate of completion is issued when you pass.

The course is for all UK healthcare professionals and maps to eight regulators. It suits:

• clinicians who want structured CPD on consultation and team communication;
• registrants responding to a complaint about attitude, being dismissive, or information not being explained;
• professionals who consult by telephone or video, or who regularly work with interpreters and patients with accessible information needs;
• team members involved in handover, escalation and speaking up.

Which course do I need? will confirm whether this or a related course fits your situation, and the full catalogue is here.

The course closes with key takeaways, a quick-reference guide, references and your reflective account.

Every UK healthcare regulator sets a communication standard. Module 6 summarises them; the table gives you the standard to name in a CPD record or reflection.

Check the current wording on your regulator's site. Healthcare Practise UK is an independent provider and is not affiliated with any regulator. Our GMC and NMC pages show how this learning fits with appraisal and revalidation.

Module 7 sets out a practical approach to remediation. It starts with the other person's experience: what they heard and how it felt, and what was happening for you at the time. It then turns that into specific behaviours to change, such as letting patients finish, using teach-back, or managing frustration in a busy clinic.

• Ask for feedback. Patient and colleague feedback, including multisource feedback, shows patterns that are hard to see alone.
• Set measurable goals. Ask a colleague or supervisor to observe consultations and give feedback against them.
• Write the reflective account. The course asks which habits you will change and how you will know you have changed them. Our reflective statement builder helps you structure that answer in your own words.
• Keep everything together. Certificate, reflection, feedback and observation notes form one piece of evidence.

A course alone does not settle a complaint or a regulator's concern; what counts is evidence that your communication has changed. NMC guidance, for example, considers whether the concern has been addressed. If you face an investigation, speak to your defence body or union. The communication and complaints pathway sets out the full plan.

• About two hours of learning, including reading, reflection points, the reflective account and the assessment. Record the time you actually spend.
• Communication scenarios, including a handover in a busy emergency department and a discharge where key information about a new medicine was missed.
• 15 scenario-based multiple-choice questions, with a pass mark of 12 out of 15 (80%).
• A written reflective account, stored only on your own device. Save a copy before you close the course.
• A certificate of completion issued by Healthcare Practise UK.

For nurses and midwives, a self-paced online course usually counts as individual learning towards the 35 CPD hours the NMC asks for over three years, unless you complete it with others (NMC CPD requirements).

This course anchors the Communication and Candour Pack, together with duty of candour, dignity and non-discrimination, two complaint courses and the Module on Reflection.

On their own, the closest companions are Duty of Candour in Healthcare Practice, for conversations after something has gone wrong; Ensuring Dignity and Non-Discrimination, where respect is part of the concern; and How to Avoid a Complaint or Investigation.