Champions of Communication: Improving PX by Empowering Teams through Education

By Breanna Fuller

At BJC Medical Group, the PX Champions Program is an extension of our five-person team, enhancing our ability to impact more than 150 practices we support on a weekly and monthly basis through education, activities, discussions, and follow-ups. Our initial three months of the program during Q4 of 2024 focused on developing our Champions and preparing them to lead discussions with their team by providing a background of what drives PX and basic leadership training.

As we started 2025, our first focus was communication, the foundation of trust and the core of PX, with monthly topics including medical jargon, effective communication, and active listening. Each month is structured similarly, starting with a virtual meeting where education is provided and next steps are reviewed, including Champions leading an activity with the team, facilitating a discussion following the activity, and weekly follow-ups for continued awareness and accountability.

Medical Jargon

One of the key messages we train our teams around communication is we must get the words right first. The way we communicate those words is what dictates the message the patient receives. Therefore, it was a natural choice to start our education with medical jargon.

Our education included discussions around what jargon is, its impact on safety and experience, and perceptions of providers that do and do not use jargon. The activity for this month, courtesy of OSF Medical Group from their presentation at the 2024 ELEVATE PX Conference, was a “boat activity,” requiring participants to draw a sailboat following instructions that included sailing jargon. This has been one of our most impactful activities, one that we continue to use in other presentations including new provider and new leader orientations and education for MA trainees and preceptors!

Following the activity, teams discussed frequently-used jargon in their clinics and how they’d replace that jargon with patient-friendly descriptions. Champions submitted these alternate descriptions to our team, and we created a medical jargon dictionary, accessible to our entire medical group, to facilitate sustainability and long-term change.

Effective Communication & Active Listening

Effective communication requires delivery and reception of a message. We and our patients take on both roles during an interaction, meaning we must ensure we are effective in both roles and that we’re helping patients do the same. In delivering messages, the focus of our education was on paraverbal elements of communication, i.e., volume, rate, and tone of speech, as well as body language.

We can ensure efficacy by using the teach-back method. For listening, or receiving messages, education focused on avoiding interruptions and displaying active listening behaviors that improve patient perception of communication. We can support patients by watching their body language and listening for opportunities to connect with empathy while listening to understand, not respond.

Activities during these months involved giving instructions, how those instructions impacted the outcome, and how listening while multi-tasking can cause us to misunderstand or miss important information altogether. Our active listening activity has also been a high-impact, well-liked activity that we use in other educational presentations. Following the activity, teams were to choose behaviors they would work on through the month and follow up on those behaviors weekly.

Impact

The impact of this program continues to be significant! As the champions took education and activities out to their teams, we saw an increase in Overall Teamwork, Staff Courtesy/Helpfulness, Overall Quality of Care, and NPS Likelihood to Recommend Practice (our organizational KPI), from the quarter before.

We look forward to sharing other topics and their impact in future blog posts so stay tuned. If you have any questions or would like additional information, please contact our team at BJCMG_PatientExperience@bjc.org.