Teaching Patient-Related Communication to Surgical Residents in Brief Training Sessions

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Surgical Training
• Communication Skills

Background:

• Effective patient-provider communication is crucial but often inadequately addressed in surgical residency due to time constraints.
• A need exists for efficient communication training models within limited educational time.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the impact of a time-limited, practice-based communication curriculum on surgical residents' communication skills.

Main Methods:

• A 4-module curriculum focusing on empathy, concerns, information delivery, and teach-back was implemented for surgical residents (PGY2-4).
• Training involved brief didactics, simulated patient interactions, feedback, and debriefing.
• Communication skills were assessed pre- and post-curriculum using objective structured clinical examinations (OSCEs) and confidence surveys.

Main Results:

• Residents reported increased use of targeted communication skills and higher confidence in specific areas like empathy and delivering bad news (p < 0.004).
• Overall OSCE scores significantly improved post-curriculum (p < 0.001), particularly in empathy, concerns/expectations, and teach-back.
• No significant change was observed in history-taking skills or the 'chunking information/avoiding jargon' module.

Conclusions:

• A brief, practice-oriented communication curriculum can effectively enhance surgical residents' self-reported skills and objective performance.
• This model offers a viable solution for integrating essential communication training into residency programs with limited curricular time.