Division of Continuing Professional Development, Weill Cornell Medicine - Qatar, Doha, Qatar.
National Medical Library, United Arab Emirates University, Al-Ain, UAE.
BMC Med Educ. 2020 Jul 9;20(1):215. doi: 10.1186/s12909-020-02074-9.
Communication skills is a core area of competency for healthcare practitioners. However, trainees deficient in those skills are not identified early enough to address the deficiency. Furthermore, faculty often struggle to identify effective remediation strategies for those who fail to meet expectations. We undertook a systematic review to determine which assessment methods are appropriate to identify learners that struggle with communication skills and the strategies used to remediate them.
The literature was searched from January 1998 through to May 2019 using academic databases and grey literature. Trainees were defined as healthcare practitioners in undergraduate, graduate and continuing education. Characteristics of studies, assessment and intervention strategies and outcomes were synthesized qualitatively and summarized in tables.
From an initial 1636 records, 16 (1%) studies met the review criteria. Majority of the learners were medical students. A few studies (44%) included students from other disciplines, residents and physicians in practice. The remediation programs, in the studies, ranged from 1 week to 1 year. Around half of the studies focused solely on learners struggling with communication skills. The majority of studies used a format of a clinical OSCE to identify struggling learners. None of the studies had a single intervention strategy with the majority including an experiential component with feedback.
A few studies collectively described the diagnosis, remediation intervention and the assessment of the outcomes of remediation of communication skills. For a remediation strategy to be successful it is important to ensure: (i) early identification and diagnosis, (ii) the development of an individualized plan and (iii) providing reassessment with feedback to the learner.
沟通技巧是医疗保健从业者的核心能力领域。然而，那些技能不足的受训者并没有被及早发现，从而无法解决这一不足。此外，教师通常难以确定那些未能达到预期的人的有效补救策略。我们进行了一项系统回顾，以确定哪些评估方法适合识别在沟通技巧方面存在困难的学习者，以及用于补救这些技能的策略。
使用学术数据库和灰色文献，从 1998 年 1 月至 2019 年 5 月对文献进行了搜索。受训者被定义为本科、研究生和继续教育阶段的医疗保健从业者。对研究的特征、评估和干预策略以及结果进行了定性综合，并以表格形式进行了总结。
从最初的 1636 条记录中，有 16 项（1%）研究符合审查标准。大多数学习者是医学生。少数研究（44%）包括来自其他学科、住院医师和执业医生的学生。这些研究中的补救计划从 1 周到 1 年不等。大约一半的研究仅关注在沟通技巧方面存在困难的学习者。大多数研究采用临床客观结构化考试（OSCE）的形式来识别存在困难的学习者。没有一项研究只有单一的干预策略，大多数研究都包括有反馈的体验式组成部分。
少数研究共同描述了沟通技巧的诊断、补救干预以及补救结果的评估。为了使补救策略取得成功，重要的是要确保：（i）及早发现和诊断，（ii）制定个性化计划，以及（iii）向学习者提供反馈的重新评估。
