Teaching communication skills to hospice teams: comparing the effectiveness of a communication skills laboratory with in-person, second life, and phone role-playing

Abstract

Introduction: Communication skills are critical in hospice care but challenging to teach. Therefore, a hospice agency developed a communication skills laboratory for nurses and social workers.

Methods: Learners role-played 3 common hospice scenarios. The role-play modalities were in-person, Second Life, and telephone. Learners were scored on 4 communication aspects.

Results: Learners in all modalities rated the laboratory as very effective. However, learners in the Second Life and phone modality showed greater improvements from scene 1 to 3 than those in the in-person modality. There were no significant differences in improvement between the Second Life and phone modalities.

Conclusion: Results support the effectiveness of this communication skills laboratory while using different teaching modalities and show phone and Second Life role-plays were more effective than an in-person role-play.

Keywords: Second Life; communication in hospice; communication skills; hospice; medical education; role-plays; teaching modalities.