The influence of simulated patient counsellingtraining sessions on intern communication skills: A questionnaire based...

The poor communication skills among doctors are one of the reasons for workplace violence (WPV) against medical professionals. The usefulness of role play as a tool to teach basic communication and counseling skills to the interns (who would very soon be first year residents) and to analyse and assess the perception of students and faculty towards role play sessions as a teaching-learning method. The 36 interns posted in the department of medicine were randomly divided into 6 groups and distributed as a treating physician, patient, family member and observers and were asked to perform role play of given clinical scenarios before and after the workshop conducted in the department. The pre-training average score for each response had lower values (M = 5, SD = 0.9) than the post-training average score for each response (M =8.46, SD = 1.92). Role-play sensitization workshop followed by detailed debriefing had a positive impact on communication skills in interns in clinical based scenarios.