Teaching, learning, and assessing communication skills

Abstract

Effective communication with patients is always considered as one of the most important components of health care. Communication skill is regarded as a soft skill, and for ages, it has been proposed that such skills are “caught” by observing the role models, mentors, and teachers. However, with the changing paradigm of medical education, with the changing outlook of the society towards the medical profession, with easy access of the medical information to the patient, and with the incremental rates of litigations against medical professionals, the focus has certainly shifted to equip our undergraduate students with these skills during graduate training itself.