Serious Illness Conversation Guide (SICG) Training

Purpose

The Serious Illness Conversation Guide is a tool that helps clinicians understand their patients’ goals and values and incorporate them in clinical decision-making. The person-centered questions in the guide explore:

  • A patient’s understanding of their illness,
  • their preferences for information,
  • their personal goals,
  • their fears and worries, as well as their sources of strength,
  • the abilities they find most important to their daily life and the tradeoffs they are willing to take for the possibility of more time, and
  • how much the people who matter to the patient know about their wishes.

Approach

Participants will gain communication skills using the Serious Illness Conversation Guide through a practice-based approach that involves both independent and group learning. Participants will:

  • Explore the importance of serious illness conversations and how they can result in better care for people who are seriously ill.
  • Outline the evidence that links the Serious Illness Care Program to outcomes that support the quadruple aim of health care.
  • Experience the Serious Illness Conversation Guide as part of a structured approach for ensuring the delivery of serious illness conversations.
  • Practice the communication skills necessary to use the Serious Illness Conversation Guide, receive feedback to improve those skills, and integrate these skills into your practice.

Training events

For a list of our upcoming trainings, please visit our Events & Activities page.

For questions, please contact Mitha Wardhani by email or (206) 577-1825.

This activity has been approved for AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™.

Building Physician Skills in Basic Advance Care Planning

Nearly all physicians agree that advance care planning conversations are important, yet more than half report feeling unprepared to do so. Not surprisingly when physicians learn how best to engage in ACP conversations, they report they are more likely to have those conversations. They also describe the conversations as very important for their patients. More than that, the physicians find the conversation professionally rewarding.

Designed for physicians and advanced practitioners, the three-module online course, Building Physician Skills in Basic Advance Care Planning, will enhance your ability to:

  • Effectively introduce and motivate patients to participate in basic advance care planning.
  • Guide and document basic ACP conversations with patients and families.
  • Successfully integrate and bill for basic ACP in everyday practice.

The interactive course allows the learners to work through real-life scenarios, analyze sample ACP conversations, and practice skills like answering patients’ questions and selecting appropriate billing codes. Valuable features include an assortment of downloadable tools and resources, such as a basic ACP conversation guide. The primary goals of basic advance care planning are to explore a person’s goals and values, and to name and prepare their health care agent.

This activity has been approved for AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™. Participants will earn Maintenance of Certification Part II credits upon successful completion of all three modules.

Honoring Choices® Pacific Northwest, jointly sponsored by the WSMA Foundation and the Washington State Hospital Association, has partnered with Respecting Choices® to offer the online course to physicians and advanced practitioners in Washington state. Through a grant from The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the online modules are free of charge for WSMA members and members of the Honoring Choices PNW initiative until February 2021. Get started at wsma.org/BasicACPModules.