Communication of bad news with standardized patients: a teaching strategy for medical students

Abstract:

Introduction:

Communication is intrinsic to the human being and is necessary for medical practice. Communicating bad news is one of the most difficult tasks imposed on doctors and learning this skill must be part of undergraduate medical training.

Objective:

To evaluate the quality of communication of bad news by medical students in simulated scenarios with a standardized patient (SP), to provide guidance and to reevaluate the skill after a thirty-day interval.

Method:

Medical students were individually subjected to a simulated scenario of communicating bad news with SP and assessed according to a scoresheet containing 34 items, over a 30-day interval (workshops D1 and D30). In D1, 60 students attended and, of those, 53 returned in D30. In D1 and D30, after the simulation, a debriefing was carried out with the presence of the teacher, research assistants and actors, highlighting the positive points and where there was room for improvement, followed by the presentation of existing protocols.

Result:

The average performance in D1 was 0.44 ± 0.22 and D30 0.71 ± 0.15 (range 0 to 1). Good performance was correlated with the communication of the bad news itself and the patient’s reception (p <0.001). Those who did not perform satisfactorily in D1, were able to learn from the first experience and 86.1% improved in D30. Of those who had already shown satisfactory performance in D1, 75% maintained it in D2. According to the assessment, 98.1% of the students enjoyed the training as a whole.

Conclusion:

Training in a simulated environment allowed the improvement of the students’ communication skills and proved to be an effective tool in medical teaching. The communication of bad news improved in the 30-day interval through training in a simulated scenario with PP, followed by guidance and further training after 30 days. Inserting students into the activity and instructing them on the fundamental points of communicating bad news through collective debriefing made the participants more qualified.

Keywords:
Health Communication; Patient Simulation; Medical Education