Practice Communication Skills Research Articles

Selections From the ABC 2012 Annual Convention, Honolulu, Hawaii

The 13 Favorite Assignments featured here were presented at the 2012 Association for Business Communication (ABC) Annual Convention, Honolulu, Hawaii. A variety of learning objectives are featured, including the following: enhancing resume’s visual impact, interpersonal skills, social media, team building, web design, community service projects, and ethics. The authors share ideas for the classroom, for online instruction, and are taught in a single class or designed to consume an entire semester. Each assignment reflects the individual author’s passion for active learning that stimulates practical skill-building, judgment, and communication skills. Additional teaching materials—including instructions to students, stimulus materials, slides, grading rubrics, frequently asked questions (FAQs), and sample student projects—are posted on http://www.salesleadershipcenter.com/research.html#mfa13 . More excellent Favorite Assignment papers can be seen on the above webpage. This year, a bonus five authors have web-published their innovations.

Ending disruptive behavior: Staff nurse recommendations to nurse educators

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to identify educational strategies that can prepare new graduates to manage disruptive behavior (DB) in the workplace. DB is any inappropriate behavior, confrontation, or conflict – ranging from verbal abuse to sexual harassment – that harms or intimidates others to the extent that quality of care or patient safety could be compromised. Individual interviews were conducted with nine staff nurses currently in practice in acute care settings in the United States. Staff nurses recommended educational strategies that focused on communication skills for professional practice. These included learning how to communicate with hostile individuals, and giving and receiving constructive criticism. Descriptions that participants provided about their work culture were an unexpected finding that has relevance for nurse educators as they prepare students for transition to practice Nurses described lack of management support and intervention for DB situations, personality clashes with coworkers, and devaluation of nursing work as affecting professional practice.

Beyond the Futility Argument

Futility is an ancient concept arising from Greek mythology that was resurrected for its medical application in the 1980s with the proliferation of many lifesaving technologies, including dialysis and renal transplantation. By that time, the domineering medical paternalism that characterized the pre-1960s physician-patient relationship morphed into assertive patient autonomy, and some patients began to claim the right to demand aggressive, high-technology interventions, despite physician disapproval. To counter this power struggle, the establishment of a precise definition of futility offered hope for a futility policy that would allow physicians to justify withholding or withdrawing treatment, despite patient and family objections. This article reviews the various attempts made to define medical futility and describes their limited applicability to dialysis. When futility concerns arise, physicians should recognize the opportunity to address conflict, using best practice communication skills. Physicians would also benefit from understanding the ethical principles of respect for patient autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, justice, and professional integrity that underlie medical decision-making. Also reviewed is the use of a fair process approach or time-limited trial when conflict resolution cannot be achieved. These topics are addressed in the Renal Physician Association's clinical practice guideline Shared Decision-Making in the Appropriate Initiation and Withdrawal from Dialysis, with which nephrologists should be well versed. A case presentation of intractable calciphylaxis in a new dialysis patient illustrates the pitfalls of physicians not fully appreciating the ethics of medical decision-making and failing to use effective conflict management approaches in the clinical practice guideline.

Silo Buster Two: Transforming Support at the College of Saint Rose

You have accessThe ASHA LeaderFeature1 Jun 2013Silo Buster Two: Transforming Support at the College of Saint RoseSpeech-language pathology and counseling students join in a voice modification program for people who are transgender. Jack Pickering Jack Pickering Google Scholar More articles by this author https://doi.org/10.1044/leader.FTR1sb2.18062013.43 SectionsAbout ToolsAdd to favorites ShareFacebookTwitterLinked In Five years ago, I received a call from a local mental health counselor about services for two transgender women interested in modifying their voices. With the help of these clients, The College of Saint Rose established a voice and communication program for people in the transgender community (on.asha.org/transgender-voice). Initially the program focused on voice, but expanded to include nonverbal communication, language and articulation. Collaboration has been an integral part of this program from the start. Each semester, graduate student clinicians in speech-language pathology provide services to five to 10 transgender clients using an apprenticeship model in which supervisors and clients serve as “master craftspeople” supporting the students. A team-based approach fosters collaborative decision-making between clinicians and clients. Participants discuss the collaborative partnership during weekly group supervisory meetings. A lynchpin of the program is collaboration with counseling, as mental health counselors play an integral role in gender transition. Counselors support people as they work through a significant and often stressful life change and connect them with providers who address primary health care, hormone therapy, surgery and other aspects of transition. We encourage students to explore their role as clinician-counselors. And we include activities that allow student clinicians and clients to experience interprofessional collaboration between speech-language pathology and counseling. These include: Classroom presentations. Clients and student clinicians visit counseling and communication science and disorders classes to practice communication skills, evaluate communication in a functional context and teach others about the transgender experience (bit.ly/cultural-comp). In two graduate classes, “Counseling for SLPs” and “Multicultural Counseling,” faculty and students also use the visits to practice counseling skills (such as active listening and facilitating the client’s story), creating a dynamic collaboration between the two disciplines. Mission and mindfulness. Two years ago, a counselor specializing in transgender health came to the group to discuss ways of creating a more positive culture. The counselor helped us craft a mission statement and determine principles of effective communication. The counselor also provided guidance on using mindfulness to enhance the group experience. Feedback from clients and student clinicians, who provide mindfulness activities, indicates that this is an important component of the program. A Learning Module In Counseling Skills. With a small grant from the college, two communication sciences and disorders faculty members, a mental health counselor, CSD students, and program clients collaborated to create a video designed to teach CSD students about counseling for individuals in the transgender community. The video focuses on gender transition, the role of the mental health counselor, group therapy and the speech-language pathologist’s role as clinician-counselor. Student projects in multicultural counseling. Two students in multicultural counseling have completed projects on counseling people who are transgender. Part of their project research involved engaging in the group’s activities and interviewing clients. Visiting mental health counselor. During the past semester, a mental health counselor from a large community-based counseling center came to the group, observing activities and providing support. She also presented to the student clinicians about gender change and the emotional aspects of transition. This arrangement will continue in an effort to foster more regular interprofessional collaboration between our program and the counseling center. The transgender voice and communication program at Saint Rose has received considerable support from students, faculty, administrators and our primary referral source—mental health counselors. The program has a relationship with the local lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community center, which extends our reach beyond the campus. Continued collaboration with mental health counselors and students studying counseling will ensure that our services meet the needs of people undergoing an extraordinarily life-changing physical and social transformation. Author Notes Jack Pickering [email protected] Advertising Disclaimer | Advertise With Us Advertising Disclaimer | Advertise With Us Additional Resources FiguresSourcesRelatedDetails Volume 18Issue 6June 2013 Get Permissions Add to your Mendeley library History Published in print: Jun 1, 2013 Metrics Downloaded 99 times Topicsasha-topicsleader_do_tagleader-topicsasha-article-typesCopyright & Permissions© 2016 American Speech-Language-Hearing AssociationLoading ...

The Degree of Practicing Communication Skills by Jordanian Secondary School Principals in Amman Governorate and its Relation to Trust Level in Their Schools from Teachers’ Point of View

The Degree of Practicing Communication Skills by Jordanian Secondary School Principals in Amman Governorate and its Relation to Trust Level in Their Schools from Teachers’ Point of View

An Educational Intervention To Improve Resident Comfort with Communication at the End of Life

Approximately 20% of deaths in the United States occur in the intensive care unit (ICU). Physician trainees lack the practical communication skills required for end-of-life care, including establishing patient preferences, participating in shared decision making, discussing prognosis, and delivering bad news. Utilizing facilitated, case-based, peer interactions, we sought to assess the feasibility and impact of a novel resident curriculum in end-of-life education. The study took place at each of the three University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) teaching hospitals, and involved all internal medicine residents at UCSF. The curriculum consisted of two one-hour lunch conference sessions and six one-hour morning reports. A pre- and post-intervention electronic survey was administered. The teaching sessions offered in this study were well-attended and well-received by residents. Our curriculum impacted resident reports of comfort with specific topics in end-of-life care, including discussions of code status and comfort care. Furthermore, we found that this curriculum, although brief, demonstrated a small impact on resident reports of self-efficacy for communication. Our findings demonstrate the feasibility of incorporating end-of-life communication skills training into an existing internal medicine resident curriculum.

Selections From the ABC 2011 Annual Convention, Montreal, Canada

The 12 Favorite Assignments featured in this article were presented at the 2011 Annual Convention of the Association for Business Communication (ABC), Montreal, Canada. A variety of learning objectives are featured: delivering bad news, handling difficult people, persuasion, reporting financial analysis, electronic media, face-to-face communication, and much more. Some Favorite Assignments take a full semester to complete; others can be done within a single class. Each assignment reflects the individual author’s passion for active learning that stimulates practical skill building, judgment, and communication skills. Additional teaching materials—instructions to students, stimulus materials, slides, grading rubrics, frequently asked questions (FAQs), and sample student projects—are posted on http://www.salesleadershipcenter.com/research.html#mfa12 .

Effectiveness of a Second Life ® Simulation as a Teaching Strategy for Undergraduate Mental Health Nursing Students

Learning may be enhanced in mental health nursing education by applying virtual reality technologies in which students may safely practice communication and assessment skills with simulated patients. The purpose of this descriptive study was to assess the effectiveness of a Second Life(®) (SL) virtual simulation as a teaching strategy for undergraduate mental health nursing students. Data were collected via a researcher-developed survey questionnaire. Students perceived the simulation to be moderately effective as an educational strategy and slightly difficult as a technical program. Positive aspects included client assessment in an environment where mistakes were without consequence, working from home, and novelty. Drawbacks were dressing and maneuvering the avatar and lack of realism. Correlations were found between educational effectiveness and technical difficulty and between educational effectiveness and age of the computer. SL virtual simulation has potential to provide unique, easily accessible, safe, and fun learning for mental health nursing students.

Improving Residents' Code Status Discussion Skills: A Randomized Trial

Inpatient Code Status Discussions (CSDs) are commonly facilitated by resident physicians, despite inadequate training. We studied the efficacy of a CSD communication skills training intervention for internal medicine residents. This was a prospective, randomized controlled trial of a multimodality communication skills educational intervention for postgraduate year (PGY) 1 residents. Intervention group residents completed a 2 hour teaching session with deliberate practice of communication skills, online modules, self-reflection, and a booster training session in addition to assigned clinical rotations. Control group residents completed clinical rotations alone. CSD skills of residents in both groups were assessed 2 months after the intervention using an 18 item behavioral checklist during a standardized patient encounter. Average scores for intervention and control group residents were calculated and between-group differences on the CSD skills assessment were evaluated using two-tailed independent sample t tests. Intervention group residents displayed higher overall scores on the simulated CSD (75.1% versus 53.2%, p<0.0001) than control group residents. The intervention group also displayed a greater number of key CSD communication behaviors and facilitated significantly longer conversations. The training, evaluation, and feedback sessions were rated highly. A focused, multimodality curriculum can improve resident performance of simulated CSDs. Skill improvement lasted for at least 2 months after the intervention. Further studies are needed to assess skill retention and to set minimum performance standards.

If I Can Talk, You Can Talk

If I Can Talk, You Can Talk

Structured youth dialogue to empower peacebuilding and leadership

AbstractThrough structured dialogue during Youth Peacebuilding and Leadership Programs, high school and college students from Cyprus, Iraq, Serbia, Armenian, Azerbaijan, Denmark, the U.K., and the United States developed expressive, relational, intercultural, and analytical skills, plus a sense of personal transformation. Well‐facilitated peer dialogue promotes self‐awareness, compassion, diverse perspectives on current issues, and capacities for social action. Facilitators structure process and content for sessions, creating a mood of safety and openness, focusing topics for appropriate risk and relevance, reconciliation, and empowerment. Participants practice communication skills essential for shared leadership: listening and speaking effectively, recognizing cross‐cultural difference, analyzing issues cooperatively, and making decisions collaboratively.

A comunicação na consulta. Uma proposta prática para o seu aperfeiçoamento contínuo

Introduction: Interpersonal communication skills are fundamental to all clinical practice, but this is especially true in relationshipbased disciplines such as family medicine. Training in communication skills is an integral part of medical education especially during specialty training. Objectives: To develop and test a model for the analysis and training of communication skills in clinical practice based on behavioural elements. Methods: The authors proposed a model for the development of communication skills in clinical practice. This model was developed between 2009 and 2010 from consultations observed in a family practice vocational training clinic. A reflexive observational cycle approach was adopted. This process combined reflexive critical practice, bibliographic study, and the discussion of behavioural elements in clinical communication. Some consultations were recorded on video for this purpose. A selective approach was used to identify aspects of clinical communication distinct from those related to the doctor-patient relationship or with the process of the clinical consultation. The authors intended to describe the “pure” communication behaviours in depth in order to observe and enhance them. Results: Observation and reflection on consultations revealed 55 behavioural skills. These skills were organized into a model composed of 12 communication skills categories. Four skills were considered central. These included listening, questioning, putting oneself in the patient’s place, and confirming and reformulating. The remaining skills were opening, observing, leading the consultation, harmonizing, explaining, summarizing, reaching agreement, and concluding. Conclusions: Clinical communication is much more rich and complex that the simple sum of the behavioural components identified. However, the proposed model was found to be relevant and useful for the improvement of doctor-patient communication skills in this setting. It also has been useful for the design of self-assessment exercises and for external assessment using video recording. Successful communication is related to the doctor’s genuine interest in each patient as a unique person, to the doctor’s will and motivation to improve their interpersonal communication skills, and to a dedicated effort to improve the large range of complex skills required for effective doctor-patient communication.

Going Back to Basics: Changing the Law School Curriculum by Implementing Experiential Methods in Teaching Students the Practice of Law

Legal education has undergone significant changes from the apprenticeship system of the eighteenth century to the more formalized legal education of today. While most of these changes have been beneficial, practical real world education and skills are missing from most students’ legal education. Experiential legal education programs, which are available at virtually all law schools, in some form, is an excellent way to bridge the gap between the skills taught in the classroom environment and the skills required to be a successful attorney practitioner. For example clinical education provides students with real legal skills that are considered valuable by many employers. Even though experiential education programs are extremely beneficial to students, employers, and the community, the benefits provided by experiential education can be increased by making them mandatory and modifying the experiential programs. This paper explores the need for mandatory experiential programs and their impact on modern legal education. Specifically, this article explores the vital role that clinics and other practical skills programs play in legal education. Introduction: As the primary means for educating future lawyers, the quality of education offered by law schools is important to both law students and the community at large. Because of the important role of law schools in society, it is crucial that educators ensure that law students are receiving an education that will give them a solid foundation as practitioners. Studies and critiques of modern law schools reveal several striking similarities. These studies show that modern law schools offer an integrated curriculum and teach legal analysis in the classroom, but could benefit from an increased focus on practical skills, ethics, and communication skills. This leads to the conclusion that law schools need to provide programs that focus on training students for the actual practice of law. Clinical legal education fulfills this objective by giving students an opportunity to obtain experiential learning. Experiential learning encompasses all three domains of learning: cognitive, performance, and effectiveness. It ensures that the students’ education encompasses the four stage sequence of optimal learning: theory, application, experience, and reflection. Thus, experiential learning allows students to learn and apply legal skills in a manner that is not available in the classroom environment. This article further explores the vital role that clinics play in legal education. The article begins with a history of clinical legal education and a summary of modern legal education, so we can examine where we have been and the current state of legal education. Then, the article explains the important role that clinical education plays in the bigger picture of modern legal education. Finally, the article more closely examines the nature of clinical education today, discusses several innovative apprenticeship programs, and offers suggestions as to how clinical education can be improved to ensure that students are receiving a legal education that will truly prepare them to enter the workforce as counselors and advocates. Conclusion: As we have seen, clinics play a crucial role in a legal education by offering students real-world experience and bridging the gap between theory and practice. Clinical legal education is essential because it helps ensure that students are prepared for the practice of law, and teaches them to act ethically, competently, and responsibly. Through making clinical, apprenticeship, and externship programs mandatory for all students, and integrating clinical methodology and goals into the core curriculum, legal educators will ensure that their graduates are better prepared for the real world of lawyering upon graduation.

Assessment Package for Language Development in Japanese Hearing-Impaired Children (ALADJIN) as a Test Battery for the Development of Practical Communication

The measurement of language development in hearing-impaired children is an important step in assessing the appropriateness of an intervention. We proposed a set of language tests (the Assessment Package for Language Development in Japanese Hearing-Impaired Children [ALADJIN]) to evaluate the development of practical communication skills. This package consisted of communication skills (TQAID), comprehensive (PVT-R and SCTAW) and productive vocabulary (WFT), comprehensive and productive syntax (STA), and the STRAW. A total of 638 children with greater than 70-dB hearing impairment were subjected to this set of language tests. Additional tests, including the PARS, the RCPM, and parental questionnaires, were administered to assess the backgrounds of the children. A trimodal distribution was observed among hearing-impaired children by the histogram-based analysis of each test. The ALADJIN is a useful Japanese-language evaluation kit for hearing-impaired children.

Enhancing medical students' communication skills: development and evaluation of an undergraduate training program

BackgroundThere is a relative lack of current research on the effects of specific communication training offered at the beginning of the medical degree program. The newly developed communication training "Basics and Practice in Communication Skills" was pilot tested in 2008 and expanded in the following year at the University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf in Germany. The goal was to promote and improve the communicative skills of participants and show the usefulness of an early offered intervention on patient-physician communication within the medical curriculum.MethodsThe students participating in the project and a comparison group of students from the standard degree program were surveyed at the beginning and end of the courses. The survey consisted of a self-assessment of their skills as well as a standardised expert rating and an evaluation of the modules by means of a questionnaire.ResultsStudents who attended the communication skills course exhibited a considerable increase of communication skills in this newly developed training. It was also observed that students in the intervention group had a greater degree of self-assessed competence following training than the medical students in the comparison group. This finding is also reflected in the results from a standardised objective measure.ConclusionsThe empirical results of the study showed that the training enabled students to acquire specialised competence in communication through the course of a newly developed training program. These findings will be used to establish new communication training at the University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf.

Intensive Communication Skills Teaching for Specialist Training in Palliative Medicine: Development and Evaluation of an Experiential Workshop

The Australasian Chapter of the Palliative Medicine (AChPM) Curriculum Development Group identified communication as a core skill that trainees in palliative medicine need to acquire, and proposed the development of a communication skills workshop that should become a compulsory part of training to achieve accreditation as a palliative medicine specialist in Australia and New Zealand. This paper describes the development and subsequent evaluation of this module. A three-day communication workshop was developed in collaboration with expert communication skills facilitators from the United States and Australia. The teaching consists of: (1) brief plenary presentations providing an evidence-based framework for communication and a demonstration of suggested strategies; (2) small group experiential learning providing opportunities to practice communication skills with clinically relevant simulated patients, self-appraisal, constructive feedback, and reflective exercises; and (3) accompanying course-specific written material. Participants completed de-identified questionnaires before, after, and three months following completion of the workshop. Forty-one participants completed the training in two workshops held in 2008 and 2009. Participants said in their questionnaire responses that the training was useful, would be helpful for their communication with patients, and that they would recommend the training to others. Qualitative feedback was highly positive. Self-assessed confidence in communication skills significantly increased following the workshop (p<.001) and was sustained at three months (p<.001). The training is highly valued by participants and increases confidence in communication skills. Facilitator training and capacity planning will be critical for the ongoing success of the communication workshop.

Co-docencia para el aprendizaje de la entrevista médica: un apoyo "in situ" para docentes clínicos en la enseñanza de competencias comunicacionales en pre grado

The first part of the medical interview is perhaps one of the most significant components of the doctoras role. How to collect relevant information and how to build a therapeutic relationship with the patient must be taught during the undergraduate curriculum. Clinical teachers have little experience in the teaching skills required to help students learn about doctor-patient communication. To measure outcomes and perceptions of using a co-teaching model in a course on interviewing during the third year of medical school in the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. A mixed methods controlled study in which the intervention group participated in a co-teaching workshop with a clinical teacher and a specialist in doctor-patient communication skills (SDPC). The control group participated in a workshop with one clinical teacher. All students completed a questionnaire measuring perception of their learning in communication skills. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect the clinical teachers' perception. At the end of the course, the clinical and communication skills of all the students were measured in an objective structured clinical examination. Students and teachers agreed that co-teaching allows greater emphasis and practice in communication skills. The results of the objective structured clinical examination show that despite this greater emphasis, no deleterious effect on the clinical skills was demonstrated during the exam. The use of co-teaching in a course on interviewing allows students to perceive a higher level of learning in communication skills, and possibly enhances their skills. The clinical teachers felt that the co-teacher was an important support.

Development and Evaluation of a High-Fidelity Canine Patient Simulator for Veterinary Clinical Training

High-fidelity human patient simulators have been used for decades in medical education to provide opportunities for students to practice technical skills, diagnostic and therapeutic planning, and communication skills in a safe environment. A high-fidelity canine patient simulator (CPS) was developed using components from a human patient simulator and a low-fidelity foam core canine mannequin. Ninety-six veterinary students participated in cardiopulmonary arrest scenarios in groups of three to five students. Afterwards, participants were asked to complete an anonymous online survey describing their experiences. A total of 70 students (73%) completed the survey. All of the students (100%) felt that the simulator session expanded their cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) knowledge base, and 97% responded that their skills and abilities had improved. Students also expressed positive opinions about the CPS, with 89% agreeing or strongly agreeing that the CPS was realistic and 73% agreeing or strongly agreeing that the scenarios generated emotions similar to real clinical situations. Most participants (98.5%) agreed or strongly agreed that the simulator was an engaging learning experience. Students commonly commented that the simulations allowed them to practice communication and teamwork skills and were more effective than paper-based, problem-oriented learning opportunities and lecture. Students also commented that they wanted more opportunities to participate in simulation exercises. These results suggest that high-fidelity veterinary simulation is an engaging educational methodology that addresses some limitations of other forms of problem-based learning. More studies are needed to quantitatively determine the effectiveness of this novel veterinary educational technology in comparison with more traditional approaches.

Problem-solving and communication skills in clinical practice: A reflection

As part of pre-registration midwifery education, the Nursing and Midwifery Council stipulates that students need to progressively develop essential key skills including problem-solving and communication. It is insufficient for these skills to be understood on a purely academic level; they need to be applied in clinical practice. This reflective account illustrates how progression and attainment of these skills and the application thereof is an achievable standard. Additionally it demonstrates the requirement for students to build on these skills so that they learn to effect positive outcomes in challenging situations which occur frequently in the midwifery profession.

An Ill-Structured PBL-Based Microprocessor Course Without Formal Laboratory

This paper introduces a problem-based learning (PBL) microprocessor application course designed according to the following strategies: 1) hands-on training without having a formal laboratory, and 2) intense student-centered cooperative learning through an ill-structured problem. PBL was adopted as the core educational technique of the course to accomplish student learning outcomes such as fundamental knowledge acquisition and applications, practical design experiences, problem-solving skills, higher-order thinking, teamwork and communication skills, and lifelong self-directed learning capability. In the designed course, students were required to build their own hardware system on a breadboard and learn how to program, download, and execute from a student mentor's demonstration. Students were also asked to choose a design topic for their team project with minimum guidelines and were encouraged to learn whatever was necessary to accomplish the project autonomously. The course has been offered for two years and has obtained overwhelming positive feedback from students.