The impact of medical consultation with standardized patients in the development of communication skills and the humanization of care

• Grant number: 10/51982-0
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: March 01, 2011
• End date: February 28, 2013
• Field of knowledge: Health Sciences - Medicine - Medical Clinics
• Principal Investigator: Marco Antonio de Carvalho Filho
• Grantee: Marco Antonio de Carvalho Filho
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências Médicas (FCM). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Medicine is a humanistic profession, and its practice is grounded in the bond between doctor and patient. For the success of this relationship, the physician should be able to create communication channels that allow the bilateral flow of information vital to the development of the treatment plan. Thus, the physician gains the confidence of the patient, and the process of investigation and treatment is now seen as a partnership. Much of the difficulty of medical students to communicate with their patients comes from the decline in empathy during the undergraduate training. This prospective, randomized and controlled trial evaluates whether the simulation of medical consultations with simulated patients increases the ability of medical students to establish appropriate channels of communication with their patients, promoting empathy and ensuring the shared treatment plan. The intervention will be applied in medical students of the Faculty of Medical Sciences, State University of Campinas, through the simulation of four clinical cases designed for the development of the study objectives. Students and their actual patients, treated during the usual training, will respond to questionnaires of satisfaction with the consultation and questionnaires of empathy, and the results will be compared to the group of students who did not attend the intervention. The study will also assess whether the presence of the actors during the debriefing has an impact on retention of skills, and whether the provision of supplementary teaching materials after debriefing could also have this effect. Finally, access to additional teaching materials, available in electronic form, will be counted to assess whether participation in the simulation increases students' interest in the topic. (AU)