Communication and Interprofessional Collaboration
Communication items are scored on process as much as content. Patient-centred communication means eliciting the patient's agenda, beliefs and goals before offering information, checking understanding, and sharing decisions. Know the practical tools: open-ended questions, reflective listening, summarising, the OARS skills of motivational interviewing (open questions, affirmations, reflections, summaries), teach-back to confirm comprehension, and plain-language adjustment for low health literacy. Use a trained interpreter rather than a family member for consequential conversations.
Concepts to own
- Structured handover and escalation, such as SBAR (Situation, Background, Assessment, Recommendation).
- Structured approaches to difficult conversations, including warning shot, information in chunks, checking response, and responding to emotion before further facts.
- Interprofessional competencies: role clarification, team functioning, collaborative leadership, conflict resolution and shared care planning.
- Assertive communication and graded assertiveness when you have a safety concern about another clinician's plan.
- Cultural humility, trauma-informed practice, and adapting communication for cognitive, sensory or language needs.
Traps
Common distractors include giving unsolicited advice before exploring the patient's perspective, reassuring prematurely ('you'll be fine'), using jargon, or assuming that a nod means understanding. Another trap is agreeing with an incorrect plan to avoid conflict, or bypassing the team and going straight to an authority. Watch for questions that reward documenting a concern rather than silently complying.
Rule of thumb
Use SBAR in any escalation item: one sentence of Situation, one of Background, one of Assessment, and a specific Recommendation with a timeframe. If an option lacks a clear request and timeframe, it is usually the weaker answer.