Dataset Information

Patients' assessment of professionalism and communication skills of medical graduates.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Professionalism and communication skills constitute important components of the integral formation of physicians which has repercussion on the quality of health care and medical education. The objective of this study was to assess medical graduates' professionalism and communication skills from the patients' perspective and to examine its association with patients' socio-demographic variables.

Methods

This is a hospital based cross-sectional study. It involved 315 patients and 105 medical graduates selected by convenient sampling method. A modified and validated version of the American Board of Internal Medicine's (ABIM) Patient Assessment survey questionnaire was used for data collection through a face to face interview. Data processing and analysis were performed using the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) 16.0. Mean, frequency distribution, and percentage of the variables were calculated. A non-parametric Kruskal Wallis test was applied to verify whether the patients' assessment was influenced by variables such as age, gender, education, at a level of significance, p ? 0.05.

Results

Female patients constituted 46% of the sample, whereas males constituted 54%. The mean age was 36 ± 16. Patients' scoring of the graduate's skills ranged from 3.29 to 3.83 with a mean of 3.64 on a five-point Likert scale. Items assessing the "patient involvement in decision-making" were assigned the minimum mean values, while items dealing with "establishing adequate communication with patient" assigned the maximum mean values. Patients, who were older than 45 years, gave higher scores than younger ones (p < 0.001). Patients with higher education reported much lower scores than those with lower education (p = 0.003). Patients' gender did not show any statistically significant influence on the rating level.

Conclusion

Generally patients rated the medical graduates' professionalism and communication skills at a good level. Patients' age and educational level were significantly associated with the rating level.

SUBMITTER: Abadel FT

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3923249 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Patients' assessment of professionalism and communication skills of medical graduates.

Abadel Fatima T FT Hattab Abdulla S AS

BMC medical education 20140211

<h4>Background</h4>Professionalism and communication skills constitute important components of the integral formation of physicians which has repercussion on the quality of health care and medical education. The objective of this study was to assess medical graduates' professionalism and communication skills from the patients' perspective and to examine its association with patients' socio-demographic variables.<h4>Methods</h4>This is a hospital based cross-sectional study. It involved 315 patie ...[more]

PMID: 24517316

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Project description:BackgroundCommunication is an essential competence for medical students. Virtual patients (VP), computerized educational tools where users take the role of doctor, are increasingly used. Despite the wide range of VP utilization, evidence-based practical guidance on supporting development of communication skills for medical students remains unclear. We focused this scoping review on VP affordance for student learning especially important in the current environment of constrained patient access.MethodsThis scoping review followed Arksey & O'Malley's methodology. We tested and used a search strategy involving six databases, resulting in 5,262 citations. Two reviewers independently screened titles, full texts (n= 158) and finally performed data extraction on fifty-five included articles. To support consideration of educational affordance the authors employed a pragmatic framework (derived from activity theory) to map included studies on VP structure, curricular alignment, mediation of VP activity, and socio-cultural context.ResultsFindings suggest that not only the VP itself, but also its contextualization and associated curricular activities influence outcomes. The VP was trialled in the highest proportion of papers as a one-off intervention (19 studies), for an average duration of 44.9 minutes (range 10-120min), mainly in senior medical students (n=23), notably the largest group of studies did not have VP activities with explicit curricular integration (47%). There was relatively little repeated practice, low levels of feedback, self-reflection, and assessment. Students viewed VPs overall, citing authenticity and ease of use as important features. Resource implications are often omitted, and costings would facilitate a more complete understanding of implications of VP use.ConclusionStudents should be provided with maximal opportunity to draw out the VPs' full potential through repeated practice, without time-constraint and with curricular alignment. Feedback delivery enabling reflection and mastery is also key. The authors recommend educators to explicitly balance computerized authenticity with instructional design integrated within the curriculum.

Project description:BACKGROUND:Across the world, local standards provide doctors with a backbone of professional attitudes that must be embodied across their practice. However, educational approaches to develop attitudes are undermined by the lack of a theoretical framework. Our research explored the ways in which the General Medical Council's (GMC) programme of preventative educational workshops (the Duties of a Doctor programme) attempted to influence doctors' professional attitudes and examined how persuasive communication theory can advance understandings of professionalism education. METHODS:This qualitative study comprised 15 ethnographic observations of the GMC's programme of preventative educational workshops at seven locations across England, as well as qualitative interviews with 55 postgraduate doctors ranging in experience from junior trainees to senior consultants. The sample was purposefully chosen to include various geographic locations, different programme facilitators and doctors, who varied by seniority. Data collection occurred between March to December 2017. Thematic analysis was undertaken inductively, with meaning flowing from the data, and deductively, guided by persuasive communication theory. RESULTS:The source (educator); the message (content); and the audience (participants) were revealed as key influences on the persuasiveness of the intervention. Educators established a high degree of credibility amongst doctors and worked to build rapport. Their message was persuasive, in that it drew on rational and emotional communicative techniques and made use of both statistical and narrative evidence. Importantly, the workshops were interactive, which allowed doctors to engage with the message and thus increased its persuasiveness. CONCLUSIONS:This study extends the literature by providing a theoretically-informed understanding of an educational intervention aimed at promoting professionalism, examining it through the lens of persuasive communication. Within the context of interactive programmes that allow doctors to discuss real life examples of professional dilemmas, educators can impact on doctors' professional attitudes by drawing on persuasive communication techniques to enhance their credibility to demonstrate expertise, by building rapport and by making use of rational and emotional appeals.

Dataset Information

Patients' assessment of professionalism and communication skills of medical graduates.

Background

Methods

Results

Conclusion

Publications

Patients' assessment of professionalism and communication skills of medical graduates.

Similar Datasets

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