Faculty-development activity to promote effective communication between instructors and students

Educators claim that conflicts and teacher-student miscommunications interfere in achieving optimal learning outcomes.

Conflicts arise when clinical instructors communicate in a patronising fashion, expressing values that are not those of their medical students. This paper presents our approach of coping with such conflicts. It is based on the notion that language is comprised of developmental levels. The objective is to switch the instructor's lower level of language from an uncontrolled reaction to a high level of efficient communication.

During our faculty-development workshops, we piloted sessions consisting of vignettes depicting instructor-student conflicts. The workshop participants were asked to react and discuss questions on their feelings in similar conflicts, and their immediate speech reaction to students. The workshop's facilitator pointed out that there was no one right solution. She singled out the reaction that takes into account the student's personality, avoiding imposing solutions. The feedback on these sessions was very favourable, indicating a high level of satisfaction.

The positive feedback is very encouraging. We believe that our workshops amplify the desired effective instructor-student communication, and suggest that the success of this intervention is partly achieved by selecting problematic issues of communication, and adjusting them to the current needs of our faculty members. In order to reproduce our approach, we suggest that other institutions should define their own values and communication code. We recommend them to use the same technique of intervention among a small group in an empowering atmosphere of discussion, using their own situations.