How to improve the medical students’ communication skills

Dear Sir

The quality of communication between patients and doctors is fundamental to providing effective healthcare. We would like to share with you our experience to improve the medical students' communication skills. A plan consisting of the following steps was developed for medical students to improve the communication skills.

Step I: Teachers’ performance review. The medical student reviews the clinical tape of doctor-patient communication. The tape of doctor-patient communication helps the student to learn the communication skills.

Step II: Clinical reasoning exercise. In a 4-week course, medical students learned communication and clinical reasoning skills in an integrative fashion using small group exercises with role-play, reflection and feedback through a structured iterative reflective process. These exercises help students to become proficient in data gathering, clinical reasoning and judgment, and practical skills, as well as understanding and demonstrating an attitude of professionalism.

Step III: Formative feedback session. Patient feedback is a useful method of assessing communications skills and the quality of doctor-patient relationships. Formative feedback plays a central role in aiding students to improve their performance.

Step IV: Appropriate teachers summary. The teacher meets with the student. The communication skills are discussed and pertinent parts of the tape are reviewed with focus on the student's areas of weakness. Appropriate teacher's summary helps the student to gain an awareness of their deficiencies and to focus on their own areas of weakness.

Over a period of one month, ninety-one percent of participants have significantly improved communication skills. The results from this study suggest that acquisition of knowledge related to communication skills by medical students will be optimised when the training is given together with the above-mentioned strategies.

Ying Su, Yan-Ming Sun, Xiao-Min Liu

First Clinical Hospital of Habin Medical University

Department of Endocrinology

No. 23 post Rd. Nangang Region, Harbin, China

Tel: [phone]

Fax: [phone]

Email: [email protected]