Customizable Curriculum to Enhance Resident Communication Skills

Communication remains challenging to teach and evaluate. We designed an online patient survey to assess anesthesia residents' communication skills from August 2014 to July 2015. In December 2014, we implemented a customized, simulation-based curriculum. We calculated an overall rating for each survey by averaging the ratings for the individual questions. Based on the Hodges–Lehmann 2-sample aligned rank-sum test, overall ratings, reported as the median (interquartile range) of residents' average overall ratings, differed significantly between the preintervention (3.86 [3.76–3.94]) and postintervention (3.91 [3.84–3.95]) periods (P = .025). Future studies should assess the intervention's effectiveness and generalizability. Accepted for publication January 16, 2019. Funding: This study was funded by the Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care and Pain Medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, MA. The authors declare no conflicts of interest. Supplemental digital content is available for this article. Direct URL citations appear in the printed text and are provided in the HTML and PDF versions of this article on the journal's website (https://ift.tt/KegmMq). Reprints will not be available from the authors. Address correspondence to John D. Mitchell, MD, Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care and Pain Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, 1 Deaconess Rd, RB-470, Boston, MA 02215. Address e-mail to jdmitche@bidmc.harvard.edu. © 2019 International Anesthesia Research Society

https://ift.tt/2EFTxWJ