Teaching pre-clinical medical students an integrated approach to medical interviewing: half-day workshops using actors.

Full Abstract

Teaching medical students to integrate patient-centered skills into the medical interview is challenging. Longitudinal training requires significant curricular and faculty time. Unsupervised students risk harm if they uncover and inappropriately manage psychosocial issues in actual patients. They fear saying the wrong thing in emotionally charged situations. Two half-day workshops for pre-clinical students integrate patient- and physician-centered interviewing. The first occurs early in the first year. The second, late in the second year, presents interview challenges (e.g., breaking bad news). Ten professional actors portray standardized patients (SPs). Groups of 10 to 15 students interview an SP, each eliciting a part of the patient's story. Qualitative evaluation revealed that, for many students, SPs afford the opportunity to experiment without harming real patients. Students view the workshops as effective (mean score for first-year students, 6.6 [standard deviation (SD), 1.0], second-year students, 7.1 [SD, 0.7] on a Likert-type scale:
1 = not at all effective to 8 = very effective).

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Author information

Author/s: Fortin, Auguste H (AH); Haeseler, Frederick D (FD); Angoff, Nancy (N); Cariaga-Lo, Liza (L); Ellman, Matthew S (MS); Vasquez, Luz (L); Bridger, Laurie (L);

Affiliation: Department of Medicine, Office of Education, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06721, USA. auguste.fortin(-atsign-)yale.edu

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article

Journal: Journal of general internal medicine : official journal of the Society for Research and Education in Primary Care Internal Medicine (J Gen Intern Med), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2002-Sep; vol 17 (issue 9) : pp 704-8

Dates: Created 2002/09/10; Completed 2002/12/03; Revised 2004/11/17;

PMID: 12220367, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Curriculum
Education, Medical, Undergraduate - methods
Humans
Medical History Taking - methods

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