Patient Perspectives of Surgical Residents’ Communication: Do Skills Improve Over Time With a Communication Curriculum?

Abstract

We aimed to assess surgical residents' communication confidence and skills, analyze resident feedback on our ongoing communication curriculum, and report feedback-driven updates. Surgical residents care for patients in the clinic and hospital and participate in a communication curriculum. We measure patient perception of resident communication using the Communication Assessment Tool (CAT). We assess resident skills confidence and collect curriculum feedback after each quarterly session. 900-bed tertiary care hospital with surgical residency program and simulation center. General surgery residents (PGY 1-5). We collected 353 CAT forms from patients in the clinic and hospital on 27 residents. Overall percent "excellent" scores (primary outcome) was 84%. In multivariate analysis we found a statistically significant increase in individuals' CAT scores over time at a rate of 1% improvement per month (p = 0.02). We observed significant improvement of skill confidence in 9 out of 10 training modules. Resident perception of the curriculum has improved over time with 90% of learners rating the course "A" or "A+" across all years. We updated the curriculum to be more learner-centered by: 1) providing differential scenarios for learner level; 2) engaging chief residents as co-faculty; 3) using both professional and volunteer (former patient) actors as SPs; and 4) refining the flow and timing of module practice. We assessed and analyzed surgical residents' communication skills and confidence over 17 months; both showed significant increase over the course of the communication curriculum. We adapted our curriculum using resident feedback and engagement. Our results suggest that communication training can be an effective tool to improve non-technical skills.