How do medical students communicate? An approach to communication profiles in third year medical students.
Abstract
Introduction: Effective communication assessment during clinical clerkships has been prioritized by medical schools. Consequently, we developed a rubric to assess the communication profile based on the physician-patient relationship, examined communication profiles and promoted self-directed learning strategies. Objective: To explore the predominant profile of third-year medical students and to foster the development of self-directed learning. Methods: We conducted an exploratory mixed-methods study using data from the Academic Advance Assessment II delivered to third year medical students, based on constructed-response items. We included four items designed to assess effective communication. A category tree was developed based on physician-patient communication styles and models. Correspondence analysis was performed to examine the association between response style categories, expert classifications, and the scores obtained. Results: We identified three profiles among the students: disease-centred profile (DCP) [n=152, 66.7%], dissonant profile (DP) [n=40, 17.5%], and patient-centred profile (PCP) [n=36, 15.8%]. We found that PCP was associated with excellent/sufficient performance levels based on the rubrics, while DP was associated with deficient/insufficient levels. Therefore, the items that assessed effective communication competency, demonstrated an association with the communication profiles identified. Conclusions: Most medical students exhibited a DCP, highlighting the need to strengthen their patient-centred communication skills. Moreover, we identified that there is a lack of focus on effective communication, the urgent need to implement adequate assessment strategies and provide feedback to students on communication skills.
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