Marrying content and process in clinical method teaching: enhancing the Calgary-Cambridge guide. Acad Med

The development of effective communicationskills is an important part of becoming a gooddoctor,1–4 and there is strong evidence that, withappropriate teaching, these skills can be both acquired and retained.5–8 In keeping with this evidence, the Medical School Objectives Project III on contemporary issues in medicine4 highlights the importance of working from a communication skills model or framework for teaching and assessing communication in medicine and lists examples of models that have been influential. Despite these important developments, learners and teachers in communication skills programs continue to experience significant dilemmas: n Integrating communication with other clinical skills—unless communication skills are integrated with history taking, physical examination, and medical problem solving, learners are unlikely to apply communication skills they have learned in real-life practice