Services

Our mission is this: To Support Transparent Communication Among Stakeholders After Adverse Medical Events.  

We work together with our clients to design and deliver trainings that work for all professionals.  For example, one approach is to design overlapping trainings in which attorneys and physicians train together to learn about both collaborative law and disclosure.   Another approach we use is to facilitate dialogue among stakeholders.  Both formats are  intended, in part, to open channels of communication between physicians and attorneys, who, historically, have often been adversaries, to overcome misunderstandings, to understand adverse medical events from many perspectives, and to begin to build a sense of community. We view both processes as building a community of cooperation.

Presentations and Dialogues:

Kathleen Clark has convened and facilitated dialogue on collaborative law in medical error situations, which have variously included the following stakeholders: attorneys for plaintiffs and defendants,  patients, patient advocates, physicians, psychologists, risk managers, insurers, general counsel for hospitals, medical ethicists, and others.   These events were in

• San Diego, CA (October, 2006);
• Fort Myers, FL (January, 2007);
• Toronto, Canada (October, 2007); and
• Oakland, CA (April, 2008).

Kathleen has made the following formal presentations:

• Presented on Appreciative Inquiry in Mediation at Association for Conflict Resolution, Washington D.C., May, 2005;
• Presented on dialogue in health care at Werner Institute for Negotiation and Dispute Resolution, Creighton University Conference on Creating Cultures of Engagement in Health Care International Conference and Dialogue, June, 2008; 
• Presented, with Dawn Effron, Esq., at Seventh National Quality Colloquium at Harvard University, Forum on Patient Safety, Quality Enhancement and Medical Error Reduction, August, 2008, poster board on Dialogue, Collaborative Law and Patient Safety;
• Presented at Taos Institute's Conference on Dialogue, Sarasota, FL, September, 2008;
• Presented, by teleconference, on Collaborative Law and Patient Safety for members and subscribers of NRC Picker, December, 2008;
• Co-presenter: Conflict Resolution Practices in Healthcare at American Bar Association Dispute Resolution Annual Conference, New York, New York, April, 2009;
• Presented at Collaborative Council of the Redwood Empire, Santa Rosa, CA, September 23, 2009, dinner speaker, The Collaborative Continuum: Collaborative Practices in Health Care;
• Presented at Symposium on Collaborative Law, Dallas, Texas, September 25, 2009, Collaborative Practice in Health Law;
• Planned, convened and facilitated day-long workshop on collaborative practices in healthcare, Civil Collaborative Law Symposium: Bringing Healing to Law and Medicine, April 7, 2010, San Francisco, CA, pre-conference program immediately before the ABA DR Conference; and 
• Presented at Association for Conflict Resolution (ACRNC) conference, Oakland, CA, March 19, 2011 on Civil Collaborative Law, focusing on collaborative law in medical error situations.