Do Medical Students Believe that Communication Skills can be Learned?

Abstract

We need to understand what students views and experiences are in orderto maximise rite effectiveness of their learning. There ale of coursemany variations within the student group but if we were to summarise theprofile of the student group based on mean ratings, it is as follows:The group commences the course generally not believing thatcommunication skills are innate and cannot be learned. However, ritegroup tends to agree rather than disagree that communication skills al-ebest acquired by modelling experienced clinicians. It believes thatdoctors are better at explaining than listening or finding out patientsviews and is somewhat more convinced of this at the end of the course.The group does not really have a view on whether communication skillsare adequately taught in medical school and this view hasn't changed bythe end of the course. There is however a subgroup who believe thatcommunication skills are innate and cannot be taught The group generallyagrees that communication skills could be acquired by use of I-ale-playand feedback and was more convinced if they had actually attended allthe sessions. At the outset the group thought it knew what to look oatfor in a consultation and there was significant improvement in this bythe end of the courseThe group was convinced of the importance of communication for bothpatient satisfaction and improvement in patients' health, the latterview being even more strongly held by the end of the tel-m.The results of this study are encouraging. Early courses are howeveronly the beginning of developing communication skills. There is a needto recognise the long term nature of such learning and the necessity ofrevisiting when students have more clinical experience and are meetingnew communication challenges.