We Need to Talk: Bringing the patient voice into our understanding of communication competency

Based on a scoping review and qualitative interviews, this session will present findings on patient priorities for communication competence in physiotherapy care. Session participants will learn what it is that patients value most in the way their physiotherapist communicates with them and how these patient preferences can be incorporated into our competency requirements – methods and lessons that easily transfer to other professions.

Study implications: Findings from this study are compared to published theoretical models on the various dimensions of communication to understand how existing practices fit with what we know about the depth and breadth of communication competence. The presentation will share lessons learned on both the communication elements that professions might want to consider as they review their competency statements and the methods they could use to increase patient perspectives in this all-important element of care.

Learning Objectives:
1.To review the generally-accepted approach to the development of essential professional competencies for entry into a profession or demonstration of continuing competency;
2. To learn what patients indicate is most important to them regarding communication during physiotherapy care;
3. To consider how we can incorporate patient preferences into our existing competency profiles for regulators and whether our current statements of expectation adequately reflect what patients value.

Speaker:
Katya Masnyk, Director - Policy, Engagement and Strategy Implementation, Ontario College of Pharmacists

Note: 2024 Annual Educational Conference attendees who planned on attending this session should reach out to staff (sthompson@clearhq.org) before registering for the webinar.

More session information: 

Communication competence is one of seven professional competencies of physiotherapists in Canada deemed essential for safe, high-quality care and used by regulators to make registration decisions. Good communication has been linked with decreased errors in healthcare, increased patient satisfaction, and improved patient outcomes. Increasingly, patients report valuing communication skills more than physiotherapists’ technical skills because thoughtful, two-way communication bolsters shared decision-making and a collaborative approach to care. Yet, physiotherapists appear to focus more on task-based discussions- seemingly unaware of what patients truly value. Communication issues continue to be at the core of the majority of patient complaints to regulators in Canada. This might be because competency documents have been developed by the profession without consideration of what patients see as most critical. We don’t know what dimensions of communication competence patients need and seek the most. To address this knowledge gap, this research sought answers directly from physiotherapy patients regarding their priorities for communication competence. Patient interviews were supplemented by a scoping review on best practices in the development of patient-informed competency documents in Canada and internationally. Data from the two sources was used to complete a constructive critique of communication competence in the Physiotherapy Essential Competency Profile (2017).

The author completed a scoping review of the published and select grey literature on the use of the patient voice in the creation of competency documents in six professions including physiotherapy, occupational therapy, medicine, nursing, psychology and social work. The session will begin by presenting findings from the literature, together with the information on published best practices on the development of professional essential competency documents.
Information from the scoping review is complemented by a qualitative study using semi-structured interviews with physiotherapy patients. Interviews explored patient views on communication styles and approaches of their physiotherapists and asked patients to identify what elements of communication they most valued. Themes from the interviews, together with findings from the scoping review will be presented. The presentation will end with reflections on the existing physiotherapy competency profile and comment on elements of the communication competency domain that may be over- or under-emphasized.