Workshop

PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOP
Wednesday 12th August 2026
2:00pm – 5:00pm

From conflict to connection: practical skills for communication at critical moments in maternity care

Maternity care is relational work under pressure, and conflict, whether between clinician and woman, within the team, or across the bedside-to-courtroom continuum, is where outcomes and liability are often decided. In this four-hour interactive workshop, Associate Professor Danny Tucker (Obstetrician and Gynaecologist), Professor Tina Cockburn (Faculty of Business and Law, QUT, Director of the Australian Centre for Health Law Research) and Melissa Freestun (Perinatal Psychologist, PhD candidate, Birth Trauma) combine clinical, legal and psychological expertise to work through the real scenarios that produce complaints, claims and harm.

Declining recommended care and coercion, as recently ventilated in Gawthrop v Bendigo Health [2026] VSC 157; adverse outcomes; vicarious trauma in the workforce; and the clinician-disclosure and duty-of-candour conversations that follow. Participants leave with a personal conflict profile, practical communication frameworks, and the skills to de-escalate before a clinical moment becomes a complaint, a claim or a psychiatric injury.