A Training manual on communication skills in medicine published

Full Book

A training manual on “Communication Skills in Medicine” has been developed and jointly published by the Bangladesh College of Physicians and Surgeons (BCPS) and the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) with technical and financial support from World Health Organization (WHO) Country Office for Bangladesh aiming to improve the communication skills of medical students and practitioners.   

Communication is an essential skill for all health care providers. This involves effective speaking, listening, reading, writing and counseling. Effective communication is an essential part of building and maintaining good physician-patient and physician-colleague relationships. The doctors, nurses, and other healthcare providers in Bangladesh, all grew up with a set of communication skills that are obtained and learned from their own environments. But unfortunately, not all of these communication skills are appropriate and can enable the professionals to achieve desired goals and objectives. Most of the problems of present day medicine, including dissatisfaction of patients and their family members, result from poor communication. 

Communication skills are learnable, trainable, and adaptable just like any other category of skill. This is one of the core topics to be taught in almost all medical schools of the developed world. Accordingly, the Bangladesh Medical and Dental Council approved the curriculum of 2002 for undergraduate courses in medicine with a provision of teaching communication skills.  Further training in a large scale was recommended for the doctors to acquire satisfactory communication skills with the ultimate aim of achieving an excellent doctor-patient relationship.  

Keeping this in view, a study was conducted at the Dhaka Medical College Hospital, for developing a training manual on communication skills for medical professionals, which involved 20 post graduate trainees to learn communication skills over a period of 8 days. The objective of the study was to see the efficacy of a prepared teaching–learning module on communication skill development among the medical graduates.

The manual includes eight modules with different aspects of communication between doctors and patients. This evidence based training document will be used in organizing related teaching sessions for medical students, as well as in training medical practitioners as part of their continuing medical education activities.  2000 copies of the manual have been printed and  distributed to medical colleges and institutes, as well as to health professional bodies. This is an important step in the right direction towards improving the effectiveness and responsiveness of health care delivery system in Bangladesh.