Abstract
BackgroundAdvanced communication skills are vital for allied health professionals, yet students often have limited opportunities in which to develop them. The option of increasing clinical placement hours is unsustainable in a climate of constrained budgets, limited placement availability and increasing student numbers. Consequently, many educators are considering the potentials of alternative training methods, such as simulation. Simulations provide safe, repeatable and standardised learning environments in which students can practice a variety of clinical skills. This study investigated students’ self-rated communication skill, knowledge, confidence and empathy across simulated and traditional learning environments.MethodUndergraduate speech pathology students were randomly allocated to one of three communication partners with whom they engaged conversationally for up to 30 min: a patient in a nursing home (n = 21); an elderly trained patient actor (n = 22); or a virtual patient (n = 19). One week prior to, and again following the conversational interaction, participants completed measures of self-reported communication skill, knowledge and confidence (developed by the authors based on the Four Habit Coding Scheme), as well as the Jefferson Scale of Empathy – Health Professionals (student version).ResultsAll three groups reported significantly higher communication knowledge, skills and confidence post-placement (Median d = .58), while the degree of change did not vary as a function of group membership (Median η2 < .01). In addition, only students interacting with a nursing home resident reported higher empathy after the placement. Students reported that conversing with the virtual patient was more challenging than conversing with a nursing home patient or actor, and students appeared to derive the same benefit from the experience.ConclusionsParticipants self-reported higher communication skill, knowledge and confidence, though not empathy, following a brief placement in a virtual, standardised or traditional learning environment. The self-reported increases were consistent across the three placement types. It is proposed that the findings from this study provide support for the integration of more sustainable, standardised, virtual patient-based placement models into allied health training programs for the training of communication skills.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12909-016-0577-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
Advanced communication skills are vital for allied health professionals, yet students often have limited opportunities in which to develop them
Students reported that conversing with the virtual patient was more challenging than conversing with a nursing home patient or actor, and students appeared to derive the same benefit from the experience
The self-reported increases were consistent across the three placement types
Summary
Advanced communication skills are vital for allied health professionals, yet students often have limited opportunities in which to develop them. Allied health professionals require high levels of empathy, communication and interpersonal skills in order to carry out their clinical roles efficiently and effectively [1,2,3]. 273), whereby generic communication skills underlie the ability to carry out more advanced clinical skills effectively, and the confidence gained from practicing clinical skills further assists in the development of such skills The evidence for this bidirectional relationship highlights the need for universities to ensure clinical training is targeting both specialised and generic facets of skill development. Achieving this aim is challenging in the current health and tertiary education climate
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