Negotiation Techniques for Healthcare professionals

"A sovereign negotiation technique can make both your professional and private life much easier: you will achieve better results and gain a better relationship with other people. After this course, you will have negotiating techniques that allow you to at least see through experienced negotiators."

Background: why should we improve our negotiation skills in healthcare?

What are negotiations in a hospital?

Negotiations take place in hospitals and scientific research on multiple occasions every day. Albeit, negotiations should not be reduced to just contracting with potential suppliers of medical devices or laboratory equipment. Instead, negotiation techniques can be applied to any interaction in which two or more parties trying to assert their interests.


In clinical care, this includes, for example, the discussion of bed quotas, surgical capacities, the definition of monthly rosters, further vocational training options, budget negotiations, or the transfer of patients to other wards or other hospitals.


In research, it is standard to bargain about using laboratory equipment, the distribution of third-party funding, the use of assistant staff, the order of authors in scientific publications, or who will be allowed to present the results at the next conference.


Impact of successful negotiations on professional and private life

Negotiations can have a significant positive impact on or delay careers in these and countless other situations. Assuming that you would achieve only 5-10% better results in all daily negotiations, these benefits add up to noticeable improvements over the course of your career and even your lifetime.


Also, successful negotiations may improve your relationship with other people. Unfortunately, physicians and nurses, who are not always used to negotiating, sometimes feel uncomfortable in bargaining situations. They are worried about jeopardizing their relationship with the other party, are scared of negative consequences, or do not know whether they have sufficient negotiating skills. Therefore, healthcare professionals sometimes accept prices and conditions without negotiation and take – usually gnashing their teeth – substantial disadvantages.

On the other hand, there are quite a few situations where you are even expected to negotiate the conditions. If you do not bargain in these expectations, you run the risk of appearing weak in the eyes of your negotiating partners and of losing respect, which significantly impairs the relationship.

A charming and playfully applicable negotiation technique can, therefore, bring you considerable advantages not only in the hospital or in the laboratory but also in your private life. Finally, a natural and friendly, but goal-oriented negotiation style will improve the relationship with your fellow human beings on many occasions.

What can you expect in this online course?

In this course, we will introduce you to the basics of negotiating art in short videos. You will get to know established negotiation techniques and principles from internationally renowned negotiating greats such as Stuart Diamond, Jack Nasher, Chris Voss, Matthias Schranner, and, of course, parts of the Havard concept (getting to yes) by Ury and Fisher. You will learn about the most health-care-relevant principles, methods, tools, tips, and tricks from literature and our own experiences from our work in hospitals.

The aim is to provide you with an arsenal of negotiating techniques from which you can create your personal negotiating toolbox. You only choose elements that fit your character well. Consequently, your future negotiations will feel natural to you and be carried out with a high degree of confidence.

The course is divided into five sections:

1. Introduction

  • Basic principles
  • A charming mindset
  • Premises for successful negotiations 
  • The underlying psychology of negotiations

2. Preparation

  • Identifying difficulties
  • Analysis of the negotiation partner 
  • Detecting differences and bargaining chips
  • Planning of the negotiation 
  • Setting goals
  • Preparations 
  • Choreography

3. The power

  • Who is more powerful? 
  • Who is stronger in which situation?
  • Disarming intimidations
  • Deflecting manipulations 
  • Strengthening your position 
  • Winning secretly

4. Strategies and tactics

  • Generic negotiation strategies
  • Subtle maneuvers 
  • Negotiation standards 
  • Tactical psychology 

5. Effective communication

  • The impact of relationships
  • Tactical empathy 
  • Detecting, creating, and controlling emotions 
  • Styles of communication
In all sections, we focus exclusively on tools and methods that we successfully applied in hospitals and in our own scientific work. This curriculum, therefore, provides you with negotiation knowledge and skills that are immediately applicable in your daily, both professional and private life.

About the speaker

Tobias Schilling, MD, MBA born in 1973 studied medicine in Hannover and finished his thesis on “Tissue Engineering of bioartificial heart valve prostheses” in 2004.


After an assignment as a surgeon in the department for cardiothoracic, transplantation, and vascular surgery of Hannover Medical School he inaugurated the clinic management of this department in 2007, which he is currently chairing to date. The turnover of the department with its 500 employees increased from 42 M € in 2007 to 74 M € in 2018. Even though this result can certainly not be attributed exclusively to the department`s innovative clinic management, it at least indicates a positive effect of a dedicated decentralized management structure in a large scale clinic.


Dr. Schilling ran several scientific projects financed by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the German Research Foundation (DFG) in the fields of clinic management, health economics, research management, and tissue engineering in close collaboration with the Leibniz University Hannover, the University of Rostock, and the University of Greifswald.  The State University Nicolae Testemitanu in Chisinau, Moldova granted him the title “Visiting Professor” in 2011 for his work on the economic impact of migration on hospitals.


Dr. Schilling founded a startup company for internet marketing and e-commerce in 1998, for which he still serves as a consultant. He gained vast experience from a plethora of successful and non-successful negotiations in strategic, operational, academic, and scientific projects.

Online course "Negotiation techniques for healthcare professionals"

Configure you individual negotiation toolbox to see through even experienced negotiatiors
225 once
  • A unique combination of theoretical knowledge with practical examples in the hospital
  • Step-by-step tutorials on how to implement and execute the course`s lessons
  • Conifguration of a personal negotiation toolbox incl. many checklists
  • Onetime personal 30-minute-coaching via phone/web following the course
  • Free future updates
Ab 1.11.2020

(c) Dr. Tobias Schilling | General Data Protection Regulation | Imprint