Evaluating family counselling skills training for family practice

Educational programmes for family practice should develop family counselling skills of students to moderate levels of competence. Few specific training programmes are part of the regular curriculum and of these few are evaluated. Twenty-three residents enrolled in a 2-year family practice programme in Toronto, Canada participated in a non-randomized control intervention study to assess a specific training programme. Pre-training counselling skills, and ability were assessed using two types of generally recognized measurement instruments, the Carkhuff Stems of Communication Skills and the Carkhuff Discrimination Index. The treatment group entered the training programme which involved supervised family counselling 8 half-days each week for one month as part of their usual rotations. They completed a second set of instruments following this course to assess immediate within-group change and then both they and the control group completed a set about one year later to measure differences. Initial scores for all residents showed a less than 'minimally facilitative' level of counselling response on both empathy and warmth dimensions. Following the course, the treatment group scored above this level and significantly better than the control group. Furthermore, the former showed a 20% improvement in ability to discriminate between effective and ineffective helping responses which was sustained over one year, while the control group's scores became worse. Teaching of counselling skills can be effective.