Communicating bad news: From medical education to practice

Abstract

Providing comprehensive care to individuals is essential to medical practice. Communicating bad news is defined as any information that seriously and adversely affects a person’s vision of the future. This study evaluates communication skills among medical students. The methodology consisted of simulation workshops on communicating bad news. The scene performed, the achievement of the primary (communication of bad news) and secondary (patient reception) objectives were evaluated using a structured questionnaire. Sixty students participated in the study, 96.7% achieved the primary objective and 78.3% did not achieve the secondary objective. In the presence of care and concern, the scores obtained were higher. The communication of bad news can be assessed by structured assessment and showing care and concern is positively associated with the quality of communication.