Communication training: Skills and beyond

As communication is a central part of every interpersonal meeting within healthcare and research reveals several benefits of effective communication, we need to teach students and practitioners how to communicate with patients and with colleagues. This paper reflects on what and how to teach.

In the previous century two major changes occurred: clinical relationship between doctor and patient became important and patients became partners in care. Clinicians experienced that outcome and especially compliance was influenced by the relational aspect and in particular by the communicative skills of the physician. This paper reflects on teaching and defines problems. It gives some implications for the future.

Although communication skills training is reinforced in most curricula all over the word, huge implementation problems arise; most of the time a coherent framework is lacking, training is limited in time, not integrated in the curriculum and scarcely contextualized, often no formal training nor teaching strategies are defined. Moreover evidence on communication skills training is scarce or contradictory.

Knowing when, what, how can be seen as an essential part of skills training. But students need to be taught to reflect on every behavior during every medical consultation.

Three major implications can be helpful to overcome the problems in communication training. First research and education on healthcare issues need to go hand in hand. Second, students as well as healthcare professionals need a toolkit of basic skills to give them the opportunity not only to tackle basic and serious problems, but to incorporate these skills and to be able to use them in a personal and creative way. Third, personal reflection on own communicative actions and dealing with interdisciplinary topics is a core business of medical communication and training.