Teaching medical communication skills: a call for greater uniformity.

Full Abstract

BACKGROUND

AND OBJECTIVES:
Evidence suggests that strategies used in teaching communication skills vary widely among, and within, medical education programs. Such variance also exists in the amount of emphasis placed on specific communication skills. This study examines the degree of variability among medical faculty in identifying opportunities for teaching communication skills.

METHODS:
Sixty-seven medical faculty (physicians and behavioral scientists) reviewed a videotaped interview of a clinician with a standardized patient. Using a transcript of the interview, participants identified moments in the tape they believed warranted an instructional intervention to reinforce or modify the clinician's communication skills. Items identified by the participants were compared to items identified by a panel of experts. Frequencies and ANOVAs were used to report on consistency and on consistency as a function of faculty experience and educational background.

RESULTS:
Faculty demonstrated marked differences in identifying teachable moments across all six communication categories:
(1) rapport building, (2) agenda setting, (3) information management, (4) active listening for the patient's perspective, (5) responding to emotion, and(6) skills in reaching common ground. Of 67 respondents, 29.6% identified none of the opportunities to teach rapport building, while only 31% identified all opportunities; 32.8% identified none of the information management opportunities, 26.9% identified all; 77.6% failed to identify the agenda-setting opportunity, 22% did identify the opportunity; 25.4% identified none of the active listening opportunities, 9% identified all; 57.6% identified none of the responding to emotion opportunities, 18% identified all; 35.8% did not identify the opportunity for reaching common ground, 64% did identify the opportunity.

CONCLUSIONS:
Our findings demonstrate that faculty who teach communications vary widely in the issues that they identify and about which they chose to teach. Recommendations are made for further research in this area.

Learn Faster Today Improve your study skills

Author information

Author/s: Buyck, David (D); Lang, Forrest (F);

Affiliation: Department of Family Medicine, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City 37614, USA.

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article

Journal: Family medicine (Fam Med), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2002-May; vol 34 (issue 5) : pp 337-43

Dates: Created 2002/05/31; Completed 2002/11/07; Revised 2004/11/17;

PMID: 12038715, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

External Links for this article (including full text providers, if available):

Click Electronic Full-text Provider Links to see options for finding the electronic full text links to this article. Note there may be a subscription or fee required for access to the full text. See our FAQ for information on finding FREE full text articles.

This article may also be located in paper journal collections available in many libraries. Use the Journal and Publication Information above to find the full article.

MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

These are the highest related articles currently in the database:

See 100+ related articles.