The Group Objective Structured Clinical Experience: building communication skills in the clinical reasoning context

Students are rarely taught communication skills in the context of clinical reasoning training. The purpose of this project was to combine the teaching of communication skills using SPs with clinical reasoning exercises in a Group Objective Structured Clinical Experience (GOSCE) to study feasibility of the approach, the effect on learners' self-efficacy and attitude toward learning communication skills, and the effect of providing multiple sources of immediate, collaborative feedback.

GOSCE sessions were piloted in Pediatrics and Medicine clerkships with students assessing their own performance and receiving formative feedback on communication skills from peers, standardized patients (SPs), and faculty. The sessions were evaluated using a retrospective pre/post-training questionnaire rating changes in self-efficacy and attitudes, and the value of the feedback.

Results indicate a positive impact on attitudes toward learning communication skills and self-efficacy regarding communication in the clinical setting. Also, learners considered feedback by peers, SPs, and faculty valuable in each GOSCE.

The GOSCE is an efficient and learner-centered method to attend to multiple goals of teaching communication skills, clinical reasoning, self-assessment, and giving feedback in a formative setting.

The GOSCE is a low-resource, feasible strategy for experiential learning in communication skills and clinical reasoning.