Vitaltalk goes to AAHPM San Diego!

We're in San Diego, and i'm still blinking from the sunlight. Vitaltalk rolled a new curriculum for palliative care clinicians, in a special day-long preconference collaboration with the American Academy of Hospice & Palliative Medicine: Advanced Communication Skills for Difficult Situations. 

For Bob, James, &; me, it was a special treat to work with a talented group of Vitaltalk faculty facilitators--Renee Boss, Lynn Bunch, Mary Buss, Kristen Chasteen, Elise Carey, Gordon Wood--with their help we did the largest small group course with simulated patients we've ever done. And we need to give a special shout-out to Julie Bruno, AAHPM Director of Education, whose vision made this collaboration happen!

The heart of our 1-day course for palliative care clinicians are two new talking maps: PAUSE for 'early' goals of care conversations; and REMAP for 'late' goals of care conversations. As Palliative Care moves upstream, it's critical for this level of communication expertise to become the standard--and while we have learned that this level of quality entails some complexity, we've also learned that we can do it--and now we're scaling it up. The participants had some great ideas for the future; one said 'i'd love for our oncology colleagues to have something like this!'.

You can find the talking maps now on our new Vitaltalk website. 

But in meantime, if you're here in san diego feeling a little smaller because of the great work everyone ELSE is doing....

Or if you're thinking 'does EVERYONE in this city jog?'...

Or if you're not in san diego feeling oppressed by all the perfect physiques (do we have to share the convention center with a conference of fitness professionals?) and are ready for a little wisdom to POWER up your communication skills...

Enjoy!