Self-assessment of communication skills' performance among medical stagers and interns of Tabriz university of medical sciences

Abstract

Physician-patient communication not only affects patient satisfaction with the treatment process but also affects information recall and treatment compliance by patients. It can also be a foundation for building a trusting relationship between physicians and patients. The purpose of this study was to investigate the performance of medical interns and interns of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences in communicating with the patient. Materials and Methods: In this cross-sectional study, all medical undergraduate students in the duration of one month were this study’s target population. Two questionnaires were provided to students. The first questionnaire included demographic information such as gender, number of weekly shifts, etc. The next questionnaire is the Patient Relationship Questionnaire, which was developed by Vakili et al. (2012) to assess interpersonal communication skills. Then, based on the score of the questionnaire, the students' performance in communicating with the patient during the internship and internship was determined and their average was compared. In each section, based on gender, type of ward, number of hours of monthly shifts based on ward type, mean scores were compared. Results: In this cross-sectional study, 152 medical students of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences were studied in two levels of internship and internship, of which 55.9% were female. In general, 82.2% of the subjects had the ability to communicate well with the patient. Also, this rate was 85.9% among trainee students and 77.6% among interns. There was no difference in patient self-assessment score based on educational level (p=0.228), but based on gender, the mean total score of performance self-assessment was significantly higher in females than in males (p=0.044). Also, no significant correlation was observed in comparing the correlation between weekly shift hours with the mean score of the self-assessment questionnaire (rp=0.027, p=0.775).