Course Introduction

Dialogue and Decisions (IHHS 101) is an educational toolkit that addresses both the value and the complexity of human interaction around decisions in health care. Effective person-centred care requires leadership, skillful communication, conflict resolution, and teamwork among health care providers of all practices and disciplines, as well as dialogue and partnerships with people.  This flexible online course is for health professional learners at UBC.  It combines online modules with practical seminars to enable you to become proficient in the skills and theories that support constructive dialogue and shared decision making with colleagues and with the people they serve. Learners who complete the course will be equipped with the interprofessional competencies that have been identified as essential for practice in a multidisciplinary health care environment.

The idea for this educational toolkit for health care providers emerged from meetings between maternity care leaders in Canada and the United States; at the Cesarean Consensus Conference in BC and the historic Home Birth Consensus Conference in DC, a multi-stakeholder group of leaders (clinicians, consumers, policymakers, legislators, researchers, ethicists, and administrators) crafted a common agenda to address equitable access to high-quality care. At both meetings, all stakeholders agreed that educational tools were needed to improve person-centered decision making, interprofessional communication and collaboration.  Since then, our interprofessional team has been working to catalyze the power of transdisciplinary imagination to create this new resource for you and your colleagues.  We look forward to working with you as we refine the course.

Using decision making around maternity care and place of birth as examples, the modules will improve knowledge of roles and scopes of practice of the various types of health providers that provide maternity care in homes, rural health centres, and hospitals.  Best practice videos, case-based and self-reflection exercises will help you to develop the professional knowledge and skills that enhance person­-centred care, facilitate shared decision making, and improve interprofessional team functioning. Evaluation of learners in this course is based on your ability to demonstrate and articulate a number of skills pertaining to collaboration, communication, conflict, and leadership.