Impact of a clinical communication skills course on communication and psychosocial competencies of 4th year family medicine residents

Ander Portugal

Keywords: communication skills ; Physician/patient relationship; Primary care education

Background:

Few studies examine the effectiveness of group video feedback in developing clinical communication skills with the use of pre-recorded videos from real-life settings. Dohms, Collares, Tibério (2020) found that this approach increased first year medical residents’ self-reported empathy, but not self-reported or simulated patient-reported Perception of Patient-Centerednes and had no impact on third rater observed Calgary – Cambridge Observation Guide of Clinical Communication Skills. In the Basque Country, all fourth-year medical residents participate in a 8-session training course in clinical communication skills similar to the one described by Dohms, et al. (2020)

Research questions:

The impact of the course on residents’ self-efficacy related to communicational, psychosocial, and family-oriented skill development
The determination of the content validity of an assessment tool designed for this purpose and the clinical relevance of the course .

Method:

Design – Longitudinal cohort study, pre-post design without a control group (since all medical residents participate in the course)
Sample – 4th year medical residents in family medicine during the 2024-2025 academic year who enroll in the Clinical Interviewing course in the Spring-Summer of 2025 (potential sample of up to 50 residents)
At the beginning of the course, residents who consent to participate in the study will complete the Jefferson Scale of Empathy and Likert-type questions about their self-efficacy in various communication, psychosocial, and family-orientated skills outlined in the national curriculum. At the end of the course, the residents who participate will complete the self-reported questionnaires and Likert-type questions to assess clinical relevance. All resident participants will be asked to submit a second video recording of a clinical consultation. The PI and a second coder trained in video-recording assessment will blindly assess all submitted videos (both in course and post-course). They will use a person-centred care with family orientation (PCC-FO) checklist being developed in our research group and the CICAA (Connect, Identify, Understand, Agree and Assist, in English) rating scale that has been developed and validated in a Spanish a multi-center study (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6875993/). Discrepancies will be resolved by a third coder or the larger research group. Each video assessment will be summarized for the resident, including an evaluation of changes from the in-course to the post-course video, pre-post course self-reported score, and a comparison of objective evaluation to the resident’s self-reported one. The resident will also be offered a verbal feedback session (in-person or via Zoom) to discuss the assessment. The residents who receive feedback (written and/or verbal) will evaluate the usefulness of the follow-up session to their clinical practice using the same Likert-type questions completed for clinical relevance in the post-course survey.

Results:

As it is a project, there are not results yet.

Conclusions:

As it is a project, there are not conclusions yet.

Points for discussion:

Real-life setting Vs Simulated patients

Videofeedback to learn communication skills

Assessment tools to evaluate person-centered care in Primary Care

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