LeadinCare: A Qualitative Informed Digital Training Platform Development to Increase Physicians’ Soft Communication Skills After COVID-19

ABSTRACT

The post-COVID-19 pandemic era has placed new demands on physicians. One of these demands is the need to use targeted knowledge and soft communication skills, to address the psychosocial problems (e.g. vaccine hesitancy, fears) of individuals with Chronic Physical Illnesses (CPIs). Focusing on training physicians in targeted soft communication skills can help health care systems to address psychosocial-type problems. Yet, such training programs are rarely implemented, effectively.

This study aimed to (a) understand physicians’ implementation challenges when using soft communication skills during the COVID-19 pandemic; (b) identify beliefs, barriers, and facilitators that can influence physicians’ behaviours to use soft communication skills; and (c) inform the content of the LeadinCare; a new digital training platform, designed to improve physicians’ soft communication skills, by leveraging the TDF Theoretical Domain Framework (TDF).

We conducted 14 in-depth semi-structured interviews with physicians in Greece, supporting non-COVID-19 cases with CPIs. We analyzed their data using inductive and deductive approaches.

Physicians highlighted time, inability to see patients in person, absence of space for non-COVID-19 cases, and poor organizational procedures as barriers to using soft communication skills. Five TDF domains (beliefs) were identified as the most salient to inform the LeadinCare platform: (1) practical and well-organized knowledge; (2) skills that support patients and their relatives; (3) physicians’ beliefs about capabilities to use the skills; (4) beliefs about consequences of using the skills (job satisfaction); and (5) the use of digital, interactive, and on-demand platforms (environmental context & resources). We mapped the domains in six narrative-based practices that informed the content of the LeadinCare.

Physicians need skills that go beyond talking and towards cultivating resilience and flexibility.

KEYWORDS:

• Soft communication skills
• COVID-19
• Theoretical domain framework
• Qualitative study
• implementation problem
• inductive and deductive analyses

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge all the Clinicians across Greece who participated in the interviews. Also, the authors would like to thank Assistant Professor, Alexandros Maragakis, The American College of Greece (Degree), for his valuable comments in the preparation of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Human Rights

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. For all the research activities, ethical approval was granted from the Ethics Committee of the University College Cork (UCC; No: STF 1 803 202 113) which was the main institution of work for the first author at the time this study was conducted.

Informed Consent

Informed consent was obtained from all the clinicians who participated in the study.

Welfare of Animals

This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors.

Transparency statements

(1) study registration: the study was not formally registered, (2) analytic plan registration: The analysis plan was not formally pre-registered, (3) availability of data: De-identified data from this study are not available in an a public archive. De-identified data from this study will be made available (as allowable according to institutional IRB standards) by emailing the corresponding author; (4) availability of analytic code: Analytic code used to conduct the analyses presented in this study are not available in a public archive. They may be available by emailing the corresponding author; and (5) availability of materials: Materials used to conduct the study are not publicly available, but can be given upon specific request to the corresponding author.

Data availability statement

Available upon request from the corresponding author

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by Wanax Digital Health Care solutions Ltd. The funders were not involved in the research plan development and execution of the study, but provided assistance in developing the semi-structure guide and participated in the final generation of the six narrative themes (aim 3).