Short Communication
Medical students’ views and experiences of methods of teaching and learning communication skills

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Abstract

This study aims to explore undergraduate medical students’ views and experiences of methods of teaching and learning communication skills. Five focus groups were conducted with 32 students, with representatives from each of the 5 years of the medical degree, at the University of Nottingham, UK. The audiotapes were transcribed in full and the transcripts were theme analysed independently by two analysts. Two themes relating to methods of teaching and learning communication skills emerged from the analysis. Students had mixed views about instructional methods of teaching and learning communication skills such as lectures. Students seemed to prefer experiential methods of learning communication skills such as role-playing with simulated patients and communicating with real patients in a clinical context. These findings have a number of educational and research implications and these are discussed in this paper.

Introduction

Aspegren [1] reviewed 83 medium- and high-quality studies evaluating the effectiveness of communication skills training programmes. Twenty-five randomised studies demonstrated that medical students could and do learn different communication skills by training. The review also demonstrated that instructional methods such as lectures were ineffective in the teaching of communication skills in comparison with experiential methods like videotaped interviews with simulated patients and feedback from the teacher. Although many studies have evaluated the effectiveness of teaching and learning methods, there is a lack of research that explores in depth undergraduate medical students’ views and experiences of such methods. This short communication aims to address this gap in the research literature.

Section snippets

Methods

After receiving ethical approval, five focus group discussions were convened with 32 students, with representatives from each of the 5 years of the medical degree, at the University of Nottingham in the academic session 2000–2001. All of the discussions were audiotaped and transcribed in full and the transcripts were theme analysed independently by two analysts. This allowed the determination of inter-rater reliability, and any differences were negotiated. The level of agreement between the two

Results

Participants’ ages ranged from 19 to 27 years (median=20, inter-quartile range=19.25–22.0). The majority were white (n=28, 87.5%), female (n=22, 68.8%) and from socio-economic status I and II (n=31, 96.9%). All spoke English as their first language. Seven (21.9%) participants were first-year students, 7 (21.9%) were second-year students, 10 (31.3%) third-year students, 5 (15.6%) fourth-year students and 3 (9.4%) were fifth-year students.

Two themes relating to teaching and learning methods

Discussion and conclusion

This study has begun to explore medical students’ views and experiences of methods of teaching and learning communication skills. Students have mixed views about instructional methods of learning communication skills such as lectures. Some students felt that lecture methods were inappropriate because they involved the passive acquisition of information rather than the active learning of skills. In his review of the literature, Aspegren [1] concluded that instructional methods like lectures were

Acknowledgements

This study was funded by a grant awarded to the first author by the Teaching Enhancement Office at the University of Nottingham (Ref. 99TL/179). We would like to thank all of the students who participated in this study.

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