Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2016 Nov 9;16(1):286.
doi: 10.1186/s12909-016-0813-z.

'I wish someone watched me interview:' medical student insight into observation and feedback as a method for teaching communication skills during the clinical years

Heather Schopper  1 , Marcy Rosenbaum  2 , Rick Axelson  3
Affiliations

'I wish someone watched me interview:' medical student insight into observation and feedback as a method for teaching communication skills during the clinical years

Heather Schopper et al. BMC Med Educ. .

Abstract

Background: Experts suggest observation and feedback is a useful tool for teaching and evaluating medical student communication skills during the clinical years. Failing to do this effectively risks contributing to deterioration of students' communication skills during the very educational period in which they are most important. While educators have been queried about their thoughts on this issue, little is known about what this process is like for learners and if they feel they get educational value from being observed. This study explored student perspectives regarding their experiences with clinical observation and feedback on communication skills.

Methods: A total of 125 senior medical students at a U.S. medical school were interviewed about their experiences with observation and feedback. Thematic analysis of interview data identified common themes among student responses.

Results: The majority of students reported rarely being observed interviewing, and they reported receiving feedback even less frequently. Students valued having communication skills observed and became more comfortable with observation the more it occurred. Student-identified challenges included supervisor time constraints and grading based on observation. Most feedback focused on information gathering and was commonly delayed until well after the observed encounter.

Conclusions: Eliciting students' perspectives on the effect of observation and feedback on the development of their communication skills is a unique way to look at this topic, and brings to light many student-identified obstacles and opportunities to maximize the educational value of observation and feedback for teaching communication, including increasing the number of observations, disassociating observation from numerically scored evaluation, training faculty to give meaningful feedback, and timing the observation/feedback earlier in clerkships.

Keywords: Clinical teaching; Communication skills; Student perspectives; Undergraduate medical education.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Simpson M, Buckman R, Stewart M, Maguire P, Lipkin M, Novack D, Till J. Doctor-patient communication: the Toronto consensus statement. Br Med J. 1991;303(6814):1385–7. doi: 10.1136/bmj.303.6814.1385. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Loureiro EM, Severo M, Bettencourt P, Ferreira MA. Attitudes and anxiety levels of medical students towards the acquisition of competencies in communication skills. Patient Educ Couns. 2011;85(3):e272–7. doi: 10.1016/j.pec.2011.07.005. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Silverman J. Teaching clinical communication: a mainstream activity or just a minority sport? Patient Educ Couns. 2009;76(3):361–7. doi: 10.1016/j.pec.2009.06.011. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Mazmanian PE, Davis DA. Continuing medical education and the physician as a learner: guide to the evidence. JAMA. 2002;288(9):1057–60. doi: 10.1001/jama.288.9.1057. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Rosenbaum ME, Axelson R. Curricular disconnects in learning communication skills: what and how students learn about communication during clinical clerkships. Patient Educ Couns. 2013;91(1):85–90. doi: 10.1016/j.pec.2012.10.011. - DOI - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources