Impact of a faculty development course on relationship-centered communication skills

ABSTRACT

Background: Effective communication is a core healthcare principle, impacting clinical outcomes and patient experience. Operationalizing physician communication-skills education across a large, integrated healthcare system requires a system-wide faculty development program. We hypothesized that faculty learners who successfully complete a faculty development program will demonstrate improvement in their ability to facilitate relationship-centered communication skills as measured by teaching simulation.

Method: Faculty learners (n = 10) participated in a pre and post teaching simulation and successfully completed the faculty development program. Three rater perspectives were obtained utilizing a customized criterion-based Checklist Tool: (1) faculty learner (self-assessment), (2) simulation observer, and (3) standardized physician learners. Wilcoxon signed rank tests were used to test for differences in teaching simulation performance pre and post the faculty development program based on the Checklist Tool's proportions (individual questions, 3 subscales and total score).

Results: There was a statistically significant increase in faculty learner performance pre versus post the faculty development program intervention for two subscales and total score (p = 0.002). The median inter-rater agreement coefficient after the intervention was higher than the median inter-rater coefficient before the intervention (AC₁ = 0.64, AC₁ = 0.79, respectively).

Conclusions: As a result of the faculty development program, faculty learners demonstrated improvement in their ability to teach and facilitate relationship-centered communication skills. Utilizing the teaching simulations, which demonstrated substantial reliability, enabled a mechanism for faculty learners to receive specific and constructive feedback to further support their development and performance.

KEYWORDS:

• Faculty development
• teaching simulation
• communication skills training
• physician communication

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Acknowledgements

This study was conducted in partnership with the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell. The authors thank the faculty learners, simulation observers, and participating standardized physician learners for their time and participation as well as the organization's corporate university for use of their class room. The authors also gratefully acknowledge the expert opinion and involvement of Dr. R. Ellen Pearlman, Myriam Kline, as well as support provided by Sven Gierlinger, Chief Experience Officer, Northwell Health and Dr. Jill Kalman, Executive Director Lenox Hill Hospital and Medical Director, System Patient Experience, Northwell Health.

Notes on contributors

Agnes Barden, DNP, RN, CPXP, Vice President, Patient & Customer Experience, Northwell Health. Dr. Barden received her Bachelor of Science degree in Nursing from Niagara University, masters of Science degree from Lehman College and Doctorate of Nursing Practice from Case Western Reserve University. She has presented nationally, is published and received national and system wide awards for patient experience excellence.

Nicole Giammarinaro, MSN, RN, Director for Education and Research, Northwell Health Office of Patient & Customer Experience. Ms. Giammarinaro received her Bachelor of Science degree in Nursing from Wagner College and masters in Nursing Education at Molloy College. She oversees education and research programing aimed at enhancing patient/customer experience.

Alice Fornari, Ed.D., R.D., Associate Dean of Educational Skills Development, Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell, AVP, Faculty Development, Northwell Health. Dr. Fornari received her doctoral degree from Columbia University, Teachers College in Higher Education, College Teaching and Academic Leadership. Her doctoral research focused on improved teaching and learning in the discipline of ethical decision making.

Jane E. Cerise, PhD, Biostatistician, Biostatistics Unit, Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, Northwell Health. Dr. Cerise received her doctoral degree in physics from University of Houston, and her masters degree in statistics from Stony Brook University. She has been a member of the Biostatistics Unit since 2017.