title: Teaching Communication Skills on the Surgery Clerkship.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Physician communication skills, linked to important patient outcomes, are rarely formally addressed after the pre-clinical years of medical school. We implemented a new communication skills curriculum during the third year Surgery Clerkship which was part of a larger curriculum revision found in a controlled trial to significantly improve students' overall communication competence.
  
  
  METHODS
  In three 2 hour workshops students, learned to address common communication challenges in surgery: patient education, shared decision-making, and delivering bad news. Each 2 hour, surgeon facilitated session was comprised of a 30 minute introductory lecture, a 15 minute checklist driven video critique, a 15 minute group discussion, a 45 minute standardized patient (SP) exercise with feedback from the SP, peers, and faculty member, and a 15 minute closing summary. To date, over 25 surgery faculty have been trained to conduct these sessions. In an end-of-clerkship survey, students reported on skill changes and assessed the curriculum's educational effectiveness.
  
  
  RESULTS
  A survey was completed by 120 of the 160 (76%) third year students who participated in the curriculum. Fifty-five percent of students reported improvement in their communication skills and ability to address specific communication challenges. Students were satisfied with the amount and quality of teaching.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Communication skills teaching can be implemented in the surgery clerkship, and surgeons are particularly well suited to teach about patient education, discussing informed consent and shared decision making, and delivering bad news. Structured case-based sessions are acceptable to, and improve the self-assessed skills of, surgery clerkship students. Faculty development geared toward such sessions has added benefits to educational activities in a clinical department overall.
authors.affiliation: a Section of Primary Care, Division of General Internal Medicine, Department of Medicine.
authors.forename: Adina L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Kalet
authors.affiliation: a Section of Primary Care, Division of General Internal Medicine, Department of Medicine.
authors.forename: Regina
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Janicik
authors.affiliation: a Section of Primary Care, Division of General Internal Medicine, Department of Medicine.
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Schwartz
authors.affiliation: b Department of Surgery New York University School of Medicine.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Roses
authors.affiliation: b Department of Surgery New York University School of Medicine.
authors.forename: Mary Ann
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Hopkins
authors.affiliation: b Department of Surgery New York University School of Medicine.
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Riles