Newsletter - June 2025
The last month has been exciting for me and for Bedside Manners. We've taken on some research with a team at the University of Sydney and one of our online mini courses was featured in the AMA CPDHome newsletter and webpage for the month of May.
I contributed as a Subject Matter Expert for the review of the Australian Communicating for Safety standard and I recorded a podcast for SBS. This month also saw Dr Avisak Bhattacharjee qualify for conferral of a doctorate from the University of Adelaide. As an external supervisor, it was great to be involved in work designed to better understand the impact of communication about breast density. You can see our most recent paper from that research here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1155/ijbc/9997077
Recommendation of the month
I plan to include a paper/book/podcast of interest each month and start this month with a special section in the journal Research on Language and Social Interaction. This newly published section covers all things ethics for conversation analysis. It also includes a a paper specifically on healthcare interactions: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/hrls20/58/2
Contributions at Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care
For those of you who aren't as much on social media (!), I summarised my contributions at the Subject Matter Expert group last week. You can find the summary, with links to relevant papers, here: https://www.bedsidemanners.com.au/blog-1-1/contributions-to-the-australian-communicating-for-safety-standard
WHO Pandemic Agreement
It was great to see that the new WHO Pandemic Agreement includes multiple references to communication. Some of the wording closely reflects that within the submission by the International Association for Communication in Healthcare to the pandemic agreement. I summarised that process from evidence-based position papers to policy here: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7330552688855646208/
Podcast
The first few episodes of a new series called How Humans Talk is now out. It features linguists and other experts on communication, including at least one conversation analyst (me!). The episode on healthcare communication will be out sometime in the next month, so keep an eye out: https://www.sbs.com.au/audio/podcast/how-humans-talk
Don't forget that our training goes beyond just that for healthcare providers, so recommend it to your friends.
Have a great June!
Sarah
Sarah J White, PhD, SFHEA, Director, Bedside Manners Pty Ltd
p.s. I've also uploaded a few silly communication designs to redbubble if you're keen for a nerdy t-shirt: https://www.redbubble.com/people/swhite-688/shop