earticle

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The purpose of this study was to identify the correlation between medical students’ communication skills awareness and performance in clinical education and to determine means to improve communication. A total of 36 fourth-year medical students were enrolled in this study and were surveyed concerning communication skills during two clinical performance examinations. The survey included 20 items in four categories: beginning an interview (greeting, identification, introduction, attention, and chief complaint), gathering information (open question, reflection, facilitation, clarification, and summarizing), giving information (discovering the patient’s understanding, empathy, easy terms, checking of understanding, and giving opportunities), and non-verbal communication (neat features, listening, eye contact, nodding, and silence). The students were educated repeatedly about their communication skills for 8 months in a clinical clerkship between two examinations. All items showed the significant correlations between communication skills awareness and performance, except for greeting and summarizing in the first examination and neat feature and silence in the second. Communication skills awareness and performance were significantly improved in terms of attention, reflection, summarizing, discovering the patient’s understanding, empathy, checking understanding, and silence. This study demonstrated that medical students’ awareness of communication skills was mostly correlated with performance and communication awareness and performance were improved following clinical education.