Coming Out of the Dark: A Curriculum for Teaching and Evaluating Radiology Residents’ Communication Skills Through Simulation

Teaching Radiologists Who Perform Image-Guided Interventions Effective Communication Skills Through Simulation

“…These results suggest that at a minimum participation in this type of training increases physician comfort in these common communication scenarios that arise during image guided interventions. The results echo those found in similar studies which showed that using simulation to teach communication skills can increase physician comfort communicating in difficult scenarios [3][4][5][6]. One participant stated they strongly disagreed to all categories after the training, indicating that they did not feel the workshop made them feel more comfortable communication with patients in these difficult situations.…”

“…Bell et al showed that using simulation with acting patients to teach communication and relations skills was found to be universally valued by all participants and was found to be preferred over simple observation [3]. While this study was not focused on radiologists specifically, other studies have suggested that the radiologist can benefit from simulation based communication skills training [4]. Additional training in the communication of abnormal results with patients has been shown to result in: greater professional satisfaction, decreased stress for the physician, and improved patient compliance.…”

Gatekeepers’ Experiences of Hiring a Sport Psychologist: A Phenomenological Study

“…Continued practice with simulated experiences can aid in the development of skills for future interactions (Rivera-Gutierrez et al, 2016). Both studies found that simulation combined with informative external feedback resulted in an increased performance in communication skills (DeBenedectis et al, 2016) and interpersonal skills (Rivera-Gutierrez et al, 2016).…”

Development of a Standardized Kalamazoo Communication Skills Assessment Tool for Radiologists: Validation, Multisource Reliability, and Lessons Learned

“…Early experiences assessing radiology trainees' competencies entailed direct observation of residents in actual clinical encounters with real patients [7] and in simulated encounters with patients specifically trained to enact diffi-cult conversations, make assessments, and provide feedback [6]. More recently, DeBenedectis et al [8] reported on the use of video-recorded simulated enactments between radiology residents and trained professional actors. Those investigators found potential for evaluating and teaching skills for a variety of difficult conversation scenarios.…”

“…The Kalamazoo instruments have been broadly used in medical education and have been validated for various clinical circumstances [11][12][13][14][15]17]. Some radiology programs have used partial items from the instrument [6] or used a Kalamazoo instrument to establish its proof of concept as a potential tool [8]. However, the instrument was developed to assess communication skills outside of radiologic practice, and its validity has not been determined specifically for radiology.…”