Investigating the knowledge of senior medical students in the last year to provide bad news for patients

Abstract

Recent studies focused on the effectiveness of each of the protocols used to improve communication between physician and patient. On the other hand, giving bad news is one of the unavoidable duties of doctors and medical students. This study aimed to investigate the ability of senior medical students to present bad news. Materials and Methods: Medical students in the last year of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences were enrolled separately in different clinical departments in the sections of their internship. The students were divided according to their wards, and the results were compared with the results obtained in different wards to consider the differences between different patients in presenting bad news. The translated instruction questionnaire (Spikes) was used to assess the skill of presenting bad news to the patient, including 16 questions examined in the study of Farokhyar et al. Its validity and reliability and Cronbach's alpha were above 0.7. Results: 149 final year medical students with a mean age of 26.19±0.89 years were examined according to the Spikes instruction, of which 65.1% were female. The score of the environmental domain and the overall ability to present bad news in female students was significantly higher. Also, the total ability score in orthopedics, dermatology, gynecology, and psychiatry wards in presenting bad news was higher than the average total ability score. There was no significant correlation between students' age and areas of ability to present bad news (p=0.512, r=0.021).