Teaching Medical Students Interactional Skills

Abstract To teach first-year medical students to communicate and interact with patients more effectively, we designed and evaluated a course that uses recent developments in communication technics. The students' goals included identification of selected doctor–patient interactions, recognition and description of their feelings and reactions to the interview, and learning new ways of responding in the interview setting. The student requires no prior knowledge of clinical medicine but gains actual interview experience. Instructors are trained to use uniform teaching strategies. By pre-course and post-course testing and by evaluating videotaped interviews, we have examined behavioral changes in student performance as a function of the course. The results indicate that students become more aware of their responses to patients and their impact on the doctor–patient relationship. They also learn to use new types of responses and behaviors with patients. (N Engl J Med 290:1232–1237, 1974)