The UK Council for Clinical Communication in Undergraduate Medical Education

We are the UK Council for Clinical Communication in Undergraduate Medical Education (UKCCC)

The UKCCC exists to promote excellence in teaching clinical communication to undergraduate medical students and to provide high quality resources for teachers.

Photo of a group of UKCCC members outside a building.



We are a community of practice: communication teachers who lead clinical communication/consultation skills programmes for undergraduate medical students. Our 129 council representatives come from 45 medical schools across the length and breadth of the UK. We provide a place to collaborate and network with colleagues across the UK. We share a passion for effective and engaging person-centred communication training for our future doctors.

The teaching and assessment of clinical communication have become central components of undergraduate medical education in the UK. Read more about this in our consensus statement on the content for an undergraduate clinical communication curriculum

Our aims

Good teaching practice

We enable good teaching practice to be shared, encouraging collaborative research and best practice in the development of effective teaching in the clinical communication community.

Research and development

We support the development of teaching materials, hold a bank of role-play scenarios on a range of topics such as breaking bad news to a patient, and publish widely on clinical communication teaching and strategy.

What our members say

UKCCC Conference – “Moving Towards Mastery – Learning from Miscommunication”

Microphone with blurred photo of people in a conference hall or seminar room.

What is Clinical Communication?

A purple concentric circle, with rings showing different components of clinical communication with 'Respect for others' at the center.

The General Medical Council requires all doctors to be able to communicate effectively, recognizing that patients are individuals with diverse needs. Doctors need to listen to patients and work in partnership with them, communicating sensitively and considerately supporting patients to engage in meaningful dialogue, meeting language and communication needs. Good team communication is also essential, for continuity of patient care.

To facilitate these outcomes and to help our undergraduate medical students become effective communicators, teaching and assessing clinical communication is central to undergraduate medical education in the UK.

The key domains of clinical communication teaching are outlined in the Communication Curriculum consensus statement and curriculum wheel, based on over 30 years of accumulated research, and underpinned by principles of professionalism, ethics, evidence-based and reflective practice. 

The Electronic Patient Record

Diagram showing key features and considerations of patient records/EPR

How we responded during the Covid 19 pandemic: A case study

Chain of wooden people figurines connected by circles and white lines.

The sudden national imperative to change to remote teaching methods and/or social distancing was a challenge shared across all the UK medical schools and required strategic planning, innovation and evidence sharing.

The UKCCC held monthly online meetings between May 2020 and June 2021to discuss the challenges of teaching and learning clinical and communication skills with social distancing in place.

We learned valuable lessons. Our participant teachers got ideas and support, and our participating medical schools and their medical students gained the conversion of their curricula to effective online delivery, flipped classroom approaches to learning clinical skills and the minimisation of COVID risk in classes taught in person.

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