Tedmed.org is a website created to support the teaching of doctor-patient communication skills and the skills needed to manage the doctor-patient consultation. Tedmed.org has created two main products to advance these goals:

• A short on-line course on doctor-patient communication: “Doctor-patient Communication In A Nutshell” (for more information on the course click here).
• A data base made up of a large annotated collection of videotaped interviews between doctors and simulated patients  (For more information on the “collection” continue below).

What is in the collection?

Most of the consultations in the collection are between medical residents [trainees] in Family Medicine and simulated patients. The educational background of the residents varies greatly with regard to the country of their undergraduate degree, their previous training in communications and their clinical experience. And so, the performance level of the doctor’s in the simulated consultations varies greatly, making the collecting very useful as a teaching tool.

The collection consists of videos of full consultations and of short clips selected from those full consultations. Both the full consultations and the “clips” are annotated. The notes on each item contain:

• background to the consultation,
• a summary of the action viewed,
• some suggestions for educational use that can be made of the item.

The collection also holds a small number of video clips originating from the commercial film industry and a few trigger films produced for undergraduate teaching.

Who can use the “collection” ?

Access to the entire annotated collection is intended only for bone fide instructors in communication in any medical setting (physicians, nurses, dentists, etc.) who have registered with tedmed.org via institutional affiliation or individual arrangement.

How is the collection indexed?

The key to the large and rich collection is its index. The index has been designed to help the casual user find relevant material in an efficient and timely manner. With the instructor’s needs in mind, the index uses a limited number of indentifying “tags” which relate to the following aspects of the video:

• characteristics of the written background scenario for the consultation: its demographics, its cultural content and any special circumstances.
  For example: the ages and the number of participants; gender issues, etc.

• The main communication challenges highlighted in the whole video or the clip.
  For example, bonding with the patient; making the diagnosis; being efficient, etc.
• communication techniques demonstrated in, or otherwise relevant to the video.
  For example, perceiving patient cues; the use of exploratory response, etc.

Multiple tags are applied to each video, and searches can be done using multiple tags.

To search the collection go to  XXXX

The indexing terminology

The terminology used in the indexing tags is eclectic, as the main language of the tags has been selected from a number of the leading published models of communication. The tags theme selves are generally well- recognized, and are also by-and-large self-explanatory. In a few cases I’ve used less known terms from the literature or idiosyncratic terms derived from the on-line course mentioned above. To assist you in your search all of the tags are linked to the glossary of terms which defines the tag as it used in this index and show how it relates to similar terms found in the literature.

(Institutions who so wish can substitute or add terminology of their own to the index in order to reinforce specific concepts or to maintain strict consistency with the terminology used in their teaching.)

Who are we ?

Tedmed.org was founded by me, Ted Miller, a graduate of the medical school at the University of Toronto (1972) and a board certified specialist in Family Medicine (Israel, 1978).  My life-long academic interest has been in doctor-patient communication.  I have been an instructor in the Department of Family Medical of the medical school of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem since 1982. I have taught communication courses as well in other universities in Israel (in Be’er Sheva and Tel Aviv) and in the schools of nursing and pharmacy in Jerusalem

I was instrumental in the design of a new multi-year under-graduate curriculum on Humanistic Medicine at Hebrew University in 2008, and on occasion I have been recruited by local health funds to provide remedial training to individual physicians in the community identified as poor-communicators.