Table 1 Interactive workshop findings

1. Encouraging hospitals transition to digital wold and the creation of summary e-notes that are easily assessable and quick to read.

2. Sending out clear written pre-appointment letters, stating reason for consultation and professional title to manage patients’ expectations.

3. Referral and post-consultation letters should be written to the patient and copied to the HCPs.

4. Letters should be written in an easy language.

5. Surgeons should not be the person of contact for patient who are not offered surgery.

6. Joint-triaging with the whole team to ensure affective triaging to the right practitioner.

7. Employing APP’s for the discharging communication as they have more time and are better suited.

8. Involving other health care professionals, such as nurses in the care of patients, to convey that surgery is not indicated but that other treatments may be suitable.

9. Making clear that surgeons only provide surgical opinion.

10. Need for consistent messages across different pathways or creating a single pathway.

11. Joint clinics – clinics with multidisciplinary staff running parallel so patients can smoothly be transitioned from one to another.

12. Revision of clinic schedules to allow more time for those patients.

13. Allowing follow-up appointments to update patients on potential new evidence-based interventions.

1. Clinical reasoning to why examination may not be needed.

2. Time-efficient reassurance techniques.

3. Breaking of ‘bad news’ to patients in the face of uncertainty.

4. Reflective, supportive, validating, and motivational communication skills (empathy, building rapport, reflective listening, validation, how to ‘presume less and ask more’, and how to convey support messages like ‘I can’t help you, but the next step is you going here…’).

5. Conveying medical information in layman’s terms in written or spoken form.