Abstract
As communication skills are essential for medical practice, many medical schools have added communication skills training to their curricula in recent years. The aim of this study was to determine and compare the attitudes to communication skills of family medicine, internal medicine and general surgery residents. Family medicine, internal medicine and general surgery residents of three training and research hospitals and one university hospital in Ankara were included in this cross-sectional study. A questionnaire was used for obtaining information about age, gender, marital status, graduation date and whether receiving any training for communication skills. The Turkish version of the Communication Skills Attitude Scale was used. In all, 58 (50%) family medicine, 30 (25.9%) internal medicine, and 28 (24.1%) general surgery residents were accepted to participate in the study. Of the 116 residents, 58 (50%) were female and 58 (50%) were male, with a mean age of 29.47±4.63 years, and 68 (58.6%) of them were married; 59.5% of the participants received training about communication skills and 56.5% of them received it at medical school. The mean positive attitude scale (PAS) score was 3.85±0.58, and the mean negative attitude scale (NAS) score was 2.42±0.52. The PAS scores of female residents were higher than those of males (P=0.01). The PAS scores of residents who received communication skills training were higher than the scores of those who had not (P=0.01). The PAS scores of family medicine residents were higher and the NAS scores were lower than those of internal medicine and general surgery residents. The communication skill attitudes of family medicine residents were better than those of internal medicine and general surgery residents.
Highlights
Interpersonal and communication skills are essential competencies for the practice of medicine
Previous studies showed that patient–physician communication is a problem, the majority of errors in medical encounters arise from deficiencies in communication, and non-compliance of patients associated with lack of communication leads to a high annual cost to the national economy (Arda et al, 2014)
In Turkey, lesson on communication skills are recently included into the syllabus in medical faculty training, it is only included in the educational program of family physicians at the level of speciality training
Summary
Interpersonal and communication skills are essential competencies for the practice of medicine. Effective communication strengthens the patient–physician relationship, improves compliance, patient satisfaction and the health outcomes in patients (Osorio et al, 2012). Previous studies showed that patient–physician communication is a problem, the majority of errors in medical encounters arise from deficiencies in communication, and non-compliance of patients associated with lack of communication leads to a high annual cost to the national economy (Arda et al, 2014). As communication is important and communication skills can be taught and improved, lessons in communication skills are included in the programs of medical faculties and in speciality training in developed countries. In Turkey, lesson on communication skills are recently included into the syllabus in medical faculty training, it is only included in the educational program of family physicians at the level of speciality training
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