Are Emergency Medicine Residents Provided Adequate Training in Patient-Centered Communication?: A Resident Survey

Emergency Medicine residents frequently face challenging communication situations. Little is known regarding resident comfort level and amount of training received in managing these types of patient care scenarios. The purpose of this study was to measure the relationships between Emergency Medicine resident comfort levels, reported amount of patient-centered communication training received and correlation between amount of GME training and comfort levels when handling difficult situations in emergency departments.

In 2016, the authors used the Council of Emergency Medicine Residency Directors (CORD) listserv to disseminate an online survey to Emergency Medicine residents. Survey content came from the Patient Centered Communication subsection of The American Board of Emergency Medicine Milestones. This survey included five different patient scenarios.

There were a total of 306 completed surveys. Residents rated their comfort level as most comfortable in scenarios regarding exhibiting empathy and least comfortable when providing bad news to patients or dealing with drug-seeking patients and difficult family members. Training was most prevalent in the areas of exhibiting empathy and giving bad news and lowest in managing drug-seeking patients and difficult patients.

This survey revealed that Emergency Medicine residents do not consider themselves generally comfortable in multiple communication scenarios and that the amount of training received in these areas is often lacking during residency. A statistically significant positive correlation existed between comfort level and amount of graduate medical training in most areas. Results suggest that increasing the amount of communication training during residency may be of benefit in influencing how comfortably residents handle difficult patient scenarios.