Written Communication Skills in Physical Therapy Students

Abstract

A functional doctor‐patient relationship is predicated upon successful communication. Medical professionals (doctors, dentists, physician assistants, nurses, physical therapists) often must convey complicated scientific information to their patients who come with varying degrees of background knowledge. It is critical for students studying these professions to learn and practice best approaches to communication. Medical communication training tends to focus on verbal skills needed for patient‐physician encounters and is the focus of most medical communications training research. More work needs to be done on understanding students' written communication skills to improve both training and practice.Here, we present a study that evaluates the written communication skills of physical therapy students enrolled in a gross human anatomy course. The study looked at the following research question: How do physical therapy students change how they communicate in writing with different audiences? Students were asked to write letters to patients, with varying levels of assumed medical knowledge. These letters summarized their analysis of the patient's symptoms as a part of case study assignments. The first patient was described as having a college education with medical background, the second patient was described as having an eighth‐grade education, and the final patient also had an eighth‐grade education. The final patient letters were compared to the previous letters through thematic analysis. Results from the qualitative coding of patient letters will present major themes present in the patient letters and if and how they change through the course of the three case studies. This work will add to our knowledge of how medical students can more effectively and efficiently learn and practice necessary communication skills that are vital for successful medical practice.This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.