The Effectiveness of Communication Skills of Pre-medical Students

Kim, Sun; Lee, Soo Jung; Choi, Chang Jin; Hur, Yera

Abstract

PURPOSE: Communication skills are essential skills which medical students need to acquire in order to become a doctor. More attention is being given to the subject but not many studies have been done in the medical education field. As communication skills are provided to students as a subject in medical educational curriculum, the assessment of its effectiveness needs to be undertaken.
METHODS
In the year 2005 and 2006, second year pre-medical students at The Catholic University College of Medicine took 'Communication Skills' course in total, 180 second year pre-medical students' survey results were used in the evaluation of the study question. The instrument used in the study was the modified and translated version of 'Beyer-Fetzer's Essential Elements of Communication Skills Assessment Sheet.' The assessment sheets were used as the pre-test and post-test to analyse the differences, which were put through the paired t-test.
RESULTS
All categories of communication skills showed an improvement. For year 2005, meaningful differences were shown in 'opening the discussion (p=.005)' and 'sharing information (p=.008)', whereas in 2006, improvements were shown in all areas.
CONCLUSION
From the result, it is clear that in order to create an effective communication skills program, the content should be more structured and focused on the program objectives.