Training of Intern Doctors with Interpersonal Communication [IPC]: a Step towards better doctor patient relationship

Abstract

Background: Interpersonal communication [IPC] is important for good doctor patient relationship. Interpersonal communication [IPC] is taught informally in medical education. It is mostly left to the students with responsibility of getting learnt themselves through a hidden curriculum. To address this issue, we decided to innovate a training module on interpersonal communication [IPC] to train medical intern doctors. Aim and Objectives: To do needs assessment of intern doctors about knowledge, skills and attitude of interpersonal communication [IPC] and evaluate impact of interpersonal communication training module in improving knowledge, skills and attitude of intern doctors about IPC Materials and methods: Present study, a quasi-experimental study, was carried out in the department of surgery, Rural Medical College, Loni from February 2014 to January 2015. Thirty intern doctors were selected who gave consent to participate in the study. Interpersonal communication [IPC] module for training was developed. Assessment of participants was done with pre and post intervention objective structured clinical examination [OSCE]. Observations: By applying Student‟s Paired „t‟ test, there was highly significant difference of increase in post intervention OSCE scores [as compared to pre intervention] at all stations in 30 participants under the study (p<0.01) Conclusion: Interpersonal communication [IPC] training module is a useful tool to develop interpersonal relationship skills amongst intern doctors.