Enhancing medical student consultation request skills in an academic emergency department

The purpose of this study was to develop an educational protocol to enhance the communication skills of medical students when requesting specialty consultation. A protocol consisting of a worksheet and oral instructions was created to teach nine criteria of effective consultation requests, derived from the existing literature. Consultation requests made by senior medical students using the protocol were evaluated and compared to consultation requests made by Emergency Medicine residents who did not complete the educational protocol. Forty-two medical student consultation requests and 50 Emergency Medicine resident consultation requests were evaluated. The students included five of the nine criteria in their consultation requests significantly more often than the residents. The median number of criteria included by the students was eight, while the median number of criteria included by the residents was six. This study shows that senior medical students can be taught to communicate effectively with specialists when requesting consultations.