Improving Medical Students' Communications Skills

Background Although communication skills are important for a good physician-patient relationship, Indian medical curricula give very little emphasis on training medical students in this aspect. Aim To determine the change in communication skills of final- year medical students following focused training. Methods This was an educational interventional study done at Pondicherry Institute of Medical Sciences, a tertiary care teaching hospital in South India, to assess communication skills among final-year MBBS students. Fifty-two students (24 males and 28 females) participated in the study. A pre- test was conducted in the form of an objectively structured clinical examination (OSCE), followed by focused training for four hours. The same OSCE was administered as post-test. A comparison between the pre-test and post-test scores was done using Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test. Results Ninety-six per cent of participants (50 out of 52) showed improvement in their performance after the focused training. The mean marks of the pre-test and post-test were 10.77+ 3 and 18.04+2, respectively, out of a maximum mark of 20 (