From practice to lecture hall: Optimizing communication courses in medical education

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Communication Skills Training
• Healthcare Professional Development

Background:

• Doctor-patient communication is crucial in medicine but current teaching lacks empirical grounding in daily practice.
• This gap may hinder optimal preparation of medical students for real-world professional challenges.
• There is a need for evidence-based content selection in medical communication courses.

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify essential topics for doctor-patient communication courses in medical studies.
• To provide empirical data for selecting relevant communication content.
• To optimize the use of limited teaching time in medical communication training.

Main Methods:

• Exploratory sequential mixed-methods design.
• Survey of teaching physicians at the University of Lübeck using a topic catalogue.
• Assessment of topic relevance, challenge, and frequency in daily practice.

Main Results:

• 46 out of 70 invited teaching physicians participated (65.7% response rate).
• Fifteen key topics were identified as relevant for communication courses.
• Topics like 'breaking bad news' and 'communicating one's own mistakes' were highlighted.

Conclusions:

• Study provides tailored recommendations for communication course case studies.
• Empirically-based topic selection can improve relevance for medical students' future practice.
• Curriculum can be structured to introduce frequent, less challenging topics early and rare, difficult topics later.