Driscoll Alexis M, Suresh Rohan, Popa George, Berglund Leif, Azer Amanda, Hed Helen, Duan Yajie, Chu Alice, McGrath Aleksandra
Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, Newark, NJ, 07103, USA.
Department of Clinical Sciences, Umeå university, Umeå, Sweden.
BMC Med Educ. 2024 Jul 31;24(1):827. doi: 10.1186/s12909-024-05773-9.
Efficient doctor-patient communication is essential for improving patient care. The impact of educational interventions on the communication skills of male and female students has not been systematically reviewed. The aim of this review is to identify interventions used to improve communication skills in medical curricula and investigate their effectiveness in improving the communication skills of male and female medical students.
A systematic review of the literature was conducted using the PRISMA guidelines. Inclusion criteria were as follows: used intervention strategies aiming to improve communication skills, participants were medical students, and studies were primary research studies, systematic reviews, or meta-analyses.
2913 articles were identified based on search terms. After title, abstract, and full-text review, 58 studies were included with interventions consisting of Training or Drama Courses, Curriculum-Integrated, Patient Learning Courses, and Community-Based Learning Courses. 69% of articles reported improved communication skills for both genders equally, 28% for women more than men, and 3% for men more than women. 16 of the 58 articles reported numerical data regarding communication skills pre-and post-intervention. Analysis revealed that post-intervention scores are significantly greater than pre-intervention scores for both male (p < 0.001) and female students (p < 0.001). While the post-test scores of male students were significantly lower than that of female students (p = 0.01), there is no significant difference between genders for the benefits, or difference between post-intervention and pre-intervention scores (p = 0.15), suggesting that both genders benefited equally.
Implementation of communication training into medical education leads to improvement in communication skills of medical students, irrespective of gender. No specific interventions benefitting male students have been identified from published literature, suggesting need of further studies to explore the phenomenon of gender gap in communication skills and how to minimize the differences between male and female students.
有效的医患沟通对于改善患者护理至关重要。教育干预对男女生沟通技巧的影响尚未得到系统评价。本综述的目的是确定用于提高医学课程中沟通技巧的干预措施，并调查其在提高男女医学生沟通技巧方面的有效性。
按照PRISMA指南对文献进行系统综述。纳入标准如下：采用旨在提高沟通技巧的干预策略，参与者为医学生，研究为原始研究、系统综述或荟萃分析。
根据检索词共识别出2913篇文章。经过标题、摘要和全文审查，纳入了58项研究，干预措施包括培训或戏剧课程、课程整合、患者学习课程和基于社区的学习课程。69%的文章报告称男女沟通技巧均有同等程度的提高，28%的文章报告称女生提高幅度大于男生，3%的文章报告称男生提高幅度大于女生。58篇文章中有16篇报告了干预前后沟通技巧的数值数据。分析显示，干预后男生（p < 0.001）和女生（p < 0.001）的得分均显著高于干预前。虽然男生的测试后得分显著低于女生（p = 0.01），但在获益方面或干预后与干预前得分的差异方面，性别之间没有显著差异（p = 0.15），这表明男女获益程度相同。
将沟通培训纳入医学教育可提高医学生的沟通技巧，无论性别如何。从已发表的文献中未发现对男生有益的特定干预措施，这表明需要进一步研究来探讨沟通技巧中的性别差距现象以及如何尽量减少男女学生之间的差异。
