CPSC Academy Meeting 2: 'Having Healthier Conversations'

Having Healthier Conversations

So much of what we do now, and even more so in the future, is helping people make a change. This might be changing a lifestyle behaviour that is negatively impacting their health, being more compliant to their medicines or simply changing something that will help them manage their long-term condition more effectively.

We are very used to advising people what to do and yet we know from the evidence that telling people what to do is not the most effective way to help them to change.

In our September Academy series, we will provide you with healthy conversation skills as part of the Making Every Contact Count (MECC) programme. MECC is being rolled out across health and social care, from hospital consultants, GPs, nurses, healthcare assistants, social workers and volunteers. Deborah Evans, pharmacist from local award-winning training company Pharmacy Complete, will be leading the events and is a MECC accredited trainer.

MECC is essentially about enabling the whole workforce (and especially relevant to pharmacists and pharmacy professionals) to recognise the opportunity they have in facilitating people to have greater awareness of their health and wellbeing, and their responsibility to change. You will know from the many conversations you have about potentially tricky topics like obesity, smoking, sexual health, mental wellbeing and alcohol that it’s difficult to get started, and once into a conversation, how to enable the individual to make a change that they are committed to.

By attending this training, you will to able to use a different approach to work with people to address health and wellbeing, impacting on all elements of your practice. Making Every Contact Count is about altering how we interact with people through learning how to recognise opportunities to talk to people about their health and the behaviours that might be contributing to disease. We are confident that these techniques will help you in all that you do – with your patients, customers, team and at home!

Please join us to make more of a difference and receive the following benefits:

• Be more confident to have conversations about potentially difficult topics
• Make a difference to someone that they truly appreciate
• Think differently about how you engage with people to support them to make a change
• Obtain a recognised qualification*
• More evidence for your HLP portfolio
• Improve your customer’s experience leading to higher retention, greater loyalty and customer advocacy
• Reduce stress about the role you play in supporting your patients/customers
• Complete a Revalidation CPD entry; this learning is a great topic for Revalidation and we will guide you through how to do this.

The certification for attending the September event will be from RSPH (Introduction to Healthier Conversations (MECC)). We plan to run the follow-up to the qualification in November which will result in full RSPH MECC certification.

Dates and locations (on the CPSC Academy Events calendar):

• Registration: 6:30pm
• Event starts: 7:15pm
• Event ends: 9:30pm

This event is FREE to attend and includes a two course hot meal and refreshments

Bookings need to be made through Eventbrite (see link below to book this event)