On 26 August Professor Diana Slade was joined by five other ANU experts to discuss the importance of communication in health care. Facilitated by Professor Paul Pickering (Director of the Research School of the Humanities and the Arts), the webinar explored the breadth of healthcare communication research at ANU. The webinar was attended by over 200 participants from 13 different countries around the world.

The conversation reflected on the critical need for good communication practices for patient safety, examined some of the communication challenges faced by different healthcare contexts, and explored how technology is currently used and could be developed to help. The following panellists shared findings from their own research and clinical experience:

• Professor Zsuzsoka Kecskes – Acting Director, ANU Medical School; Senior Staff Specialist, Department of Neonatology, Canberra Hospital
• Professor Diana Slade – Director, the ANU Institute for Communication in Health Care
• Professor Imogen Mitchell – Director, ANU Medical School; Intensive Care Specialist, Canberra Hospital; Clinical Director, ACT COVID-19 Response
• Professor Christine Phillips AM; Professor, Social Foundations of Medicine, ANU Medical School; Medical Director, Companion House Refugee Medical Service; Director, HealthANSWERS Translational Partnership
• Dr Susy Macqueen – Senior Lecturer, Linguistics & Applied Linguistics, ANU School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics
• Associate Professor Hanna Suominen – Computer Science, ANU College of Engineering & Computer Science

The Institute would like to thank each of the panellists for taking the time to be a part of this event and for contributing such enriching experiences and findings from their work and research. We would also like to thank all of the participants for tuning in to the webinar.

If you didn’t get a chance to see the webinar live, the recording is available here

Our speakers couldn't answer all the great questions that were asked during the webinar so we asked them to answer some of the remaining questions offline, which you can see in the document attached below.