Standardized Patients or Conventional Lecture for Teaching Communication Skills to Undergraduate Medical Students: A Randomized Controlled Study

Abstract

Objective The conduct of a medical interview is a challenging skill, even for the most qualified physicians. Since a training is needed to acquire the necessary skills to conduct an interview with a patient, we compared role-play with standardized patients (SP) training and a conventional lecture for the acquisition of communications skills in undergraduate medical students.Methods An entire promotion of third year undergraduate medical students, who never received any lessons about communications skills, were randomized into 4 arms: 1) SP 2 months before the testing of medical communications skills (SP); 2) conventional lecture 2 months before the testing (CL); 3) two control groups (CG) without any intervention, tested either at the beginning of the study or two months later. Students were blindly assessed by trained physicians with a modified 17-items Calgary-Cambridge scale.Results 388 students (98.7%) participated. SP performed better than CL, with significant statistical differences regarding 5 skills: the use of open and closed questions, encouraging patient responses, inviting the patient to clarify the missing items, encouraging of the patient’s emotions, and managing the time and the conduct of the interview. The SP group specifically improved communications skills between the SP training and testing sessions regarding 2 skills: the use of open and closed questions and encouraging patient responses. No improvements in communications skills were observed in CG between the two time points, ruling out a possible time effect.Conclusion Role-play with standardized patients appears more efficient than conventional lecture to acquire communication skills in undergraduate medical students.

Efficacy of Communication Skills Training of Preclinical Medical Students via Health Literacy Teaching to High School Students: A Pilot Study

“…Including an Objective Structured Clinical Examination and seeking SP feedback are also considered crucial. 9,35,[39][40][41][42][43][44][45] To achieve improvements in medical students' communication skills and, potentially, their eventual medical performance, both features should be incorporated in the CST. 1,7 Furthermore, the identification of the long-term outcomes-such as sustained communication-skills improvement and overall clinical proficiency-should be explored.…”

Evaluating the effectiveness of a single-day simulation-based program in psychiatry for medical students: a controlled study

“…As in several previous investigations, simulated patients were portrayed by mental health professionals [ 34 , 58 , 59 , 61 , 71 , 74 ]. Simulated patients were trained to portray the simulated patient by two academic teachers (PR & MR), themselves trained as health simulation trainer in a short (one-week) university course.…”

Exploring potential benefits of communication training with standardised patients for medical students

“…SPs are mainly used as a tool for evaluating students. However, since there is immense learning potential for students in working with SPs as a teaching resource, the method has the potential to be effective in clarify missing items, showed more encouragement of the patient's emotions, and were better at managing the time and performance of the interview [31]. However, in the study by Geoffroy and colleagues, the students were observed during an interview and no challenging behaviours were targeted.…”

“…However, as concluded in a recent systematic review, there is very little published work assessing the impact of SP use in medical educations and also evaluating any behaviour change in the participants [30]. Although a few studies have included CS outcomes in students being trained in taking a medical history [31] or breaking bad news to a SP [32,33], indicating some positive effects, studies seldom include a wider range of challenging behaviours or explore both feasibility and behavioural effects.…”