Say This, Not That: Strategies for Improving Your Counseling Skills

Say This, Not That: Strategies for Improving Your Counseling Skills
Presented by Mike Hoffman, PhD

Strengthen your connection with patients through intentional communication. This presentation will focus on specific language and counseling strategies that help build stronger rapport and shift away from a paternalistic model of medicine toward a more collaborative, patient-centered approach. By adopting these techniques, clinicians can enhance engagement, support behavior change, and foster more meaningful interactions with patients and their families.

Dr. Michael Hoffman is a Pediatric Psychologist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia within the Center for Childhood Communication and an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He provides integrated psychological services with an emphasis patient-centered, collaborative care for deaf and hard of hearing children and their families. Dr. Hoffman serves on the cochlear implant team. He has also developed a tiered model of service to screen all DHH patients and provide brief interventions for challenges related to deafness (deaf identity, adjustment to hearing loss/limited device usage, family stress related to hearing loss, academic/peer difficulties, and traditional psychiatric diagnoses such as anxiety, depression, and ADHD). Dr. Hoffman is deaf himself, and utilizes one cochlear implant and one hearing aid.

Students email tcarpenter@wannerassoc.com to receive the code to register.