The Institute for Healthcare Communication Inc

IHC aims to create and disseminate validated, evidence-based and sustainable skills development programs that equip all members of the healthcare team to respond skillfully and empathically to patients, families and other team members.

IHC's 15+ curricula are each designed to address an array of communication skills, for various audiences. Each course has been developed with substantive input from internal and external subject matter experts, and each is managed by an IHC Senior Trainer/Course Manager. Courses are accredited (variously by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education, ACCME; the American Academy of Family Practice, AAFP and the American Nurses Credentialing Center, ANCC, through a joint providership with the University of Pittsburgh School of Nursing,) and periodically updated to stay current with new developments in the field.
Each IHC course is highly experiential, with graduated opportunities for active role-play, discussion, feedback and skills practice. Practice opportunities are designed to be contextually relevant and meaningful to individuals with varying learning styles.
IHC's primary area of direct activity is leading train-the-trainer (TTT) faculty courses. IHC Senior Trainers work with the organizations that engage us to help select individuals within the organizations to become IHC faculty members. Once they are trained and certified, such in-house faculty members become qualified to lead IHC workshops in their own organizations. This TTT model is highly effective: IHC communication skills workshops can incorporate local terminology and specific issues and organizations can target and schedule trainings as they see fit.

IHC brings decades of experience to healthcare communication skill-building. Current and past principals of IHC have contributed to the evolving literature on empathic skills development. CEO Kathleen Bonvicini, MPH, EdD, is a well-respected researcher and practitioner in the area of communication skills education. IHC engages a cadre of highly experienced Senior Trainers, some of whom also serve a Course Managers. Senior Trainers all have extensive communication skills program leadership experience and varied clinical expertise, including physicians, nurses, social workers, psychologists and more. We have a well-developed and highly experienced operational team that works closely with provider organizations to structure optimally effective communication skills training programs.
The members of IHC's Board of Directors bring extensive and varied expertise, and they provide ultimate governance oversight for the organization. IHC also has an Advisory Council that contributes ideas for new program development and expert advice on accreditation and other issues as they arise.
IHC has a longstanding history and culture as a “learning organization": soliciting and listening to feedback from many sources, creatively responding to requests for innovations, and seeking to model the communication behaviors we teach.

We have trained 2,040 individuals as IHC faculty, and logged 14,227 communication skills workshops. A total of 214,577 learners have participated in IHC workshops. We have developed 16 distinct communication skills workshops and 14 train-the-trainer faculty courses; most recently, in response to TTT learner and partner organization requests, we have formalized full-day offerings consisting of workshops plus expanded skills practice opportunities.
The most compelling testament to the value of our work is the longevity of the relationships we maintain with partner organizations. We value the feedback and suggestions from partner organizations about strategies for sustaining skills development and new program ideas.
There are a number of healthcare topics where our communication skills training curricula could be adapted for specialized use. For example, our course that teaches motivational interviewing-consistent skills, “Choices and Changes: Motivating Healthy Behaviors", could be a valuable basis for clinicians who work with individuals with overweight or with substance use disorders.
We are also interested in accelerating the pace of updates to our video assets and presentation materials and extension of training materials to online and blended formats. We aim to upgrade our program evaluation processes, which will yield significant efficiencies.