title: Teaching communication skills: using action methods to enhance role-play in problem-based learning.
abstract: Role-play is a method of simulation used commonly to teach communication skills. Role-play methods can be enhanced by techniques that are not widely used in medical teaching, including warm-ups, role-creation, doubling, and role reversal. The purposes of these techniques are to prepare learners to take on the role of others in a role-play; to develop an insight into unspoken attitudes, thoughts, and feelings, which often determine the behavior of others; and to enhance communication skills through the participation of learners in enactments of communication challenges generated by them. In this article, we describe a hypothetical teaching session in which an instructor applies each of these techniques in teaching medical students how to break bad news using a method called SPIKES [Setting, Perception, Invitation, Knowledge, Emotions, Strategy, and Summary]. We illustrate how these techniques track contemporary adult learning theory through a learner-centered, case-based, experiential approach to selecting challenging scenarios in giving bad news, by attending to underlying emotion and by using reflection to anchor new learning.
authors.affiliation: From the Departments of Behavioral Science and Faculty and Academic Development (FACDEV), The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX.
authors.forename: Walter F
authors.initials: WF
authors.lastname: Baile
authors.forename: Adam
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Blatner
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003142:Communication; D004504:Education, Medical, Undergraduate / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D018794:Problem-Based Learning / Q000379:methods*; D012381:Role Playing; D014342:Truth Disclosure