Training medical students in interpersonal relationship skills

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Communication Skills Training
• Psychology

Background:

• Medical education literature shows a gap in experimental studies on interviewing skills.
• Existing training often overlooks Rogerian core facilitative qualities.
• There's a need for effective methods to train students in handling emotional patient interactions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe and experimentally evaluate a novel training method for medical students.
• To enhance students' comfort with emotionally intense material.
• To improve students' skills in core facilitative qualities, including empathy.

Main Methods:

• An experimental design comparing a trained group with a control group.
• The training focused on increasing comfort with emotional content and core facilitative skills.
• Evaluation included assessments of empathic understanding, attitudes, and personality variables.

Main Results:

• The experimental group demonstrated a significant training effect compared to the control group.
• Students showed improved ability to recognize and communicate empathic understanding.
• The training also influenced attitude and personality variables.

Conclusions:

• The developed training method is effective in enhancing medical students' interviewing and empathic skills.
• The approach successfully addresses the neglect of core facilitative qualities in medical training.
• Further research should explore the long-term impact of such training on clinical practice.