Implementing a Communication Skills Course for Undergraduate Medical Students

Purpose: The purposes of this study were to describe a viable communication skills course for medical students and to discuss how to improve it for better teaching.Methods: The subjects were a communication skills course and one hundred thirty three thirdyear medical students who participated in the course in 2006.Program evaluation by students was conducted using questionnaire at the end of each session and the entire course.Results: The communication course was named as "Medical Communication Skills".Basic communication skills and interview skills for specific clinical situations were taught.We used experiential leaning methods such as standardized patient (SP) interviews with feedback.Students rated the course highly especially for SP-based practice sessions and student group projects.The course evaluation indicated that the students considered communication skills to be significantly more important as a clinical competency after the completion of the course. Conclusion:We confirmed that the communication skills course was well perceived by medical students and they preferred experiential learning methods more than didactic methods.