Our Vision

A healthcare system where providers are skilled in patient-centered communication, use patient goals and values to guide treatment, and can engage in effective, empathetic, and honest conversations with their patients.

The TalkOregon Design

Serious illness conversations are hard, for both clinicians and patients, but learning and practicing specific skills can improve these conversations and make them more effective. The TalkOregon program is an evidence-based workshop that teaches core communications skills to help master tough conversations with patients and their families. Built in collaboration with VitalTalk, our program is designed for clinicians who work with seriously ill and/or aging patients. It's built on principles of adult learning and communication research.

Benefits to Formal Communication Training

Research shows major benefits to formal communication skills training. It's equally effective for clinicians of all specialties who work with seriously ill patients. It improves clinician self-efficacy in engaging in specific relationship-centered communication skills, improves the patient satisfaction level of all clinicians regardless of baseline scores, and improves clinician measures of empathy and burnout. 

Clinicians also report high levels of satisfaction of communication skills training in terms of:

• Being a valuable use of time.
• Learning relevant skills to use with their patients.
• Learning feasible skills to implement in their practice.
• Changing their attitudes about their own skills and communication abilities.
• Enhancing their knowledge and skillsets.

Regional Mentorship Program

We've partnered with The Kinsman Foundation to offer a regional mentorship program to Oregon healthcare organizations outside the Portland-metro area. This 3-year, fully grant-funded program will help us mentor leaders in communication skills training, assist them in developing their own communication curriculum, and help create successful, enduring programs to help train others in compassionate communication. 

Why should you train with us?

• Time and money are precious resources. Our 3-year mentorship program gives you the most benefit for your time without spending any money. 
• You'll get research-backed training that will help quality improvement for your clinicians, patients, and health system while helping to reduce unnecessary waste of non-monetary resources. 
• Only 10% of clinicians who complete Faculty Development Training with VitalTalk continue forward. Our 3-year mentorship solves this problem by helping put training into action.