Building Connections: Caregivers of Children with Medical Complexity Facilitating Communication Training with Pediatric Residents

Esther Lee and her team will be presenting on their project where they co-designed a workshop and created a “Preferred Language Guide” to improve communication with caregivers of children with medical complexity.

The team will present how this project was developed in partnership from beginning to end with a person with lived experience (Cynthia Vallance) and had family partners lead and guide the workshop. The workshop, facilitated by the family partners, focused on how to form partnerships and how to communicate using a strengths-based approach. Together, they also created a preferred language guide that offers alternatives to phrases commonly used in medical settings which are rooted in ableist perspectives. The goal of this research is to support residents to learn more about how to communicate with families using trauma-informed and inclusive language.

The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session