This course is open to staff from all health boards

Even when we want to change the way we do things, our determination and ability to do so meets internal barriers. This course will help you to think about how you feed back to colleagues, to engage them in change and to promote their strengths, so that we can all be the best version of ourselves.

This course equips you to help other people:

• Activate their own motivation to improve
• To help colleagues think about what strengths they bring to the workplace
• To help colleagues reflect on their development opportunities
• Make meaningful, sustainable change, helping you become the person who empowers others to develop

Course overview

Participants will work in a small peer group and address communication challenges chosen from their own clinical practice, management, team and teaching roles

Learning Outcomes

EC4H courses help you have difficult conversations with more confidence and skill, improving the impact you have on others, and your own emotional resilience and job satisfaction:

Strengthen Staff Confidence in Communication
• Build skills that enable self-reflection, building a positive feedback culture
• Encourage clarity in both verbal and written communication.

Foster a Culture of Open Dialogue and Psychological Safety
• Promote trust and transparency through respectful, two-way communication.
• Create an environment where staff feel safe to challenge the status quo, share feedback, and promote innovation.

Enhance Change Communication Competence
• Support staff with the tools to communicate effectively when providing feedback, promoting honesty, clarity and respect
• Practise techniques to help manage shared difficulties

Promote Collaborative Problem-Solving and Decision-Making
• Improve group communication skills that support teamwork and shared leadership
• Encourage staff participation in shaping and implementing change initiatives.

Develop Influencing and Negotiation Skills
• Empower staff to engage in positive change
• Provide strategies for building alliances and relationships

Align Communication with Organisational Values and Goals
• Promote communication of the vision and values of healthcare.
• Connect day-to-day communication to broader strategic objectives and change efforts.

Encourage Ownership and Accountability
• Apply motivational change techniques in interpersonal communication
• Support the role of every team member in shaping a positive and adaptive workplace culture.

Tutor Team

Dr Calum Arthur

EC4H Lead Tutor

Dr Calum Arthur is an experienced psychological coach and performance psychologist, with extensive experience across high performing environments, including the Military, Olympic Sports and Health Sectors.  Calum currently works as a Senior Lecturer in Surgical Performance at the University of Edinburgh, contributing to cutting edge research in surgeon performance.

Professor Belinda Hacking

EC4H  Lead Tutor

Professor Belinda Hacking set up EC4H in 2002 and has led the development of this national training network. She has worked with professionals in healthcare across the UK developing the EC4H coaching and training programmes in clinical communication.  Until January 2025, Belinda worked for NHS Lothian as the Director of Psychology.  Belinda has a special interest in shared decision-making in healthcare and has more than 40 publications focusing on psychological adjustment in palliative care, clinical communication and shared decision making. HCPC accredited. She was awarded as a Research Fellow to the Open University in June 2025 and as an Honorary Professor to Edinburgh University in October 2025.  Prof. Hacking continues to work as a Consultant Clinical Psychologist and has a busy clinical practise, alongside her teaching, coaching and research roles.  British Psychological Society membership: 33194