They are about communication — a patient who felt unheard, surprised, or dismissed. The patterns behind those complaints are predictable, and the skills that prevent them can be taught. Communication Rounds is an online, case-based program being built to do exactly that.
A short written guide to the encounter patterns that surface over and over when clinical encounters are formally observed and assessed — what each looks like in clinic, why it escalates, and the specific change that defuses it. Free, for clinicians.
For clinicians. Your email is used to send the guide and occasional updates on the program, including founding-cohort enrolment. Unsubscribe at any time.
Complaints predict risk.Unsolicited patient complaints, together with case volume and specialty, meaningfully predict a physician's malpractice-claim risk.Hickson et al., JAMA, 2002
The mechanism is communication.Physicians who are never sued orient patients, check understanding, and draw out concerns — differences of technique, not talent.Levinson et al., JAMA, 1997
And it is trainable.Complaint-driven communication programs operate in more than 140 hospitals and have published reductions in claims.Vanderbilt CPPA, PARS program
The program is organised around one skill set with three consequences. Protection: the encounter patterns and documentation habits that keep ordinary visits from becoming College complaints — and that hold up if one arrives. Patient experience: rapport, difficult conversations, and de-escalation that patients feel and remember. Practice growth: in private-pay settings, the patient's experience is the product; satisfaction drives retention, referrals, and reviews more cheaply than any marketing you can buy.
Seven self-paced modules built on real, anonymised cases — short demonstrations, specific phrasing, and self-assessment. Designed around a working clinical schedule.
I have spent twenty years watching the clinical encounter more closely than most physicians ever get to: first as a teaching fellow at Imperial College London, teaching medical students communication through video-feedback simulated encounters; then filming and reviewing family-medicine residents' real patient encounters as UBC communication faculty, supporting trainees as a confidential advisor, and serving as a medical investigator for one of Canada's provincial regulatory Colleges — observing the real encounters and documentation of physicians under investigation and completing structured assessments, deliberately kept blind to the complaint itself so the assessment stayed objective. The same handful of communication patterns surfaced anyway, encounter after encounter — almost never a failure of medicine, almost always a failure of the conversation. Across twenty years I have taught the clinical encounter, simulated it, examined it, and investigated it. This program teaches what that much direct observation teaches.
Teaching fellow, Imperial College London — clinical communication for medical students through video-feedback simulated encounters, two decades ago
Communication-skills faculty — filmed encounter review with family-medicine residents, in group discussion format
OSCE examiner — undergraduate and postgraduate clinical examinations with simulated patients, including examinations for international medical graduates
Founded the UBC family-medicine simulation program — resident teams in simulated emergencies, with feedback on team communication and clinical performance
Resident confidential advisor
Medical investigator — observed encounters and documentation of physicians under investigation, a provincial College of Physicians and Surgeons
13 years in focused chronic-pain practice · UBC clinical faculty
Before the program is finalised, it will be built with a small founding cohort — shaped by their feedback and their real (anonymised) cases. Everything is asynchronous and fits an erratic clinical schedule: nothing is scheduled, nothing is mandatory. Founding members receive the finished course and all future updates, and are asked for honest feedback in return.
Joining the list carries no obligation — you'll receive the guide and the enrolment details when they open.
Not yet — certification is planned, not promised. It is being designed to meet CFPC Mainpro+ certification standards, and certification will be sought before public launch, with Royal College MOC recognition to follow. Founding members receive credits as soon as certification is confirmed. For nurse practitioners and naturopathic doctors: most of their regulators use self-directed continuing-competence frameworks under which a program like this can typically be claimed — confirm the details with your college.
The clinical skills are universal, and the medico-legal framing maps closely to Commonwealth regulators (GMC, AHPRA, and others). International tracks will follow the Canadian launch.
Physicians, nurse practitioners, and naturopathic doctors. All three run their own clinical encounters — history, examination, diagnosis, plan — carry their own regulatory-College exposure, and face the same complaint patterns; the material transfers directly. Tracks for registered nursing and allied health are planned.
About 60–90 minutes per module, one module every two weeks, entirely on your own schedule — post-call at 2 a.m. counts. The single live case-review call is optional and recorded. Built for people with full clinics.