Using patient instructors to teach behavioral counseling skills

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Behavioral Medicine
• Health Psychology

Background:

• Effective counseling skills are crucial for promoting health-related behavior change.
• Traditional medical training often lacks standardized, effective methods for teaching these skills.
• Patient instructors (PIs) offer a novel approach to simulating patient interactions and providing feedback.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate an innovative exercise for teaching medical students counseling skills.
• To compare the effectiveness of feedback from patient instructors versus simulated patients and videotaped reviews.
• To assess the impact of patient instructor feedback on perceived realism and effectiveness of training.

Main Methods:

• Third-year medical students participated in a counseling skills training exercise.
• Interventions included direct feedback from a trained patient instructor (PI) or faculty feedback on a videotaped simulated patient (SP) interview.
• Students' perceptions of realism, effectiveness, and feedback helpfulness were recorded.

Main Results:

• Students receiving PI feedback rated the interview session as more realistic and effective than those receiving SP feedback.
• Both groups found PI feedback more helpful than videotaped review, despite only experiencing one method.
• This suggests PI feedback is a highly valued component of skills training.

Conclusions:

• Training medical students using patient instructors (PIs) is an effective method for enhancing counseling skills in health behavior change.
• Direct feedback from PIs is perceived as more realistic and effective than traditional methods like SPs and videotaped reviews.
• This approach holds promise for improving behavioral medicine education across various contexts.