Teaching Communication Skills in Medical Language Courses: An Exploration of Its Efficiency in Teaching the Use of 'Perspective Checking Questions' in Health Education Talk

10.6145/jme201511

Mei-Hui Tsai

information-transfer skills ； perspective checking questions ； health education talks ； medical Taiwanese ； bottom-up teaching approach

Journal of Medical Education

19卷3期（2015 / 09 / 01）

120 - 131

英文

Background: Physicians received little training in transferring medical information to patients. One highly recommended skill is checking patients' perspectives' regarding the target information. This study proposes a pedagogy integrating communication training into medical language courses. Starting 2011, the course 'Medical Taiwanese' was offered to students in Southern Taiwan, with the dual goals of advancing students' limited Taiwanese proficiency and enhancing their skills in transferring medical knowledge to Taiwanese-speaking patients. Objectives: This study demonstrates (1) how training in the skill of asking 'perspective checking questions' ('PCQ') can be integrated with language courses by using a 'bottom-up' pedagogy, and (2) what its teaching efficiency is with regard to students' learning of three PCQ types in health education talks. Method: A total of 58 students (medical seniors and juniors, medicine-related majors, and non-medicine majors) used Taiwanese to give two health education sessions about an illness, before and after the training, to a 70-year-old Taiwanese-speaking person. The training is a three-hour course with activities following the 'bottom-up' principle. Two researchers coded students' use of three PCQ types- knowledge ('do you know anything about diabetes'), socio-psycho characteristics ('do you smoke'), and response ('do you have any questions'). The data was examined by a Wilcoxon sign rank test, Kruskal-Wallis test, and McNemar's test. Results: No significant differences were observed among the four groups' use of PCQs in the two sessions. All groups made significant advances in using PCQs (p＜0.05). Response checking was more commonly done than knowledge and socio-psycho characteristics checking before the teaching, but with the training, the total number of users of the latter two approaches increased significantly (p＜0.01). Implications: The training of information-transfer skills can be integrated with medical dialect courses. This integration also worked on learners with limited medical knowledge. While the skill of response-checking can be easily retrieved from our teaching/learning experience, those of knowledge and characteristics checking require more training.

1. The R Project for Statistical Computing. Available at: [https://www.r-project.org/] Accessed on: 17th Jul., 2014.
2. Bol, N,van Weert, JC,de Haes, HC(2014).Using cognitive and affective illustrations to enhance older adults' website satisfaction and recall of online cancer-related information.Health Commun,29,678-88.
3. Campbell, P,Burnaby, B(2001).Participatory Practices in Adult Education.New Jersey:Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
4. Corcoran, N(2007).Communicating Health: Strategies for Health Promotion.Los Angeles:SAGE Publications.
5. Davis, RH,Alexander, LT,Yelon, SL(1974).Learning System Design: An Approach to the Improvement of Instruction.New York:McGraw-Hill Book Company.
6. Falvo, DR(1994).Effective Patient Education: A Guide to Increased Compliance.Maryland:Aspen Publishers.
7. Girgis, A,Sanson-Fisher, RW,McCarthy, WH(1997).Communicating with patients: surgeons' perceptions of their skills and need for training.Aust N Z J Surg,67,775-80.
8. Jansen, J,van Weert, J,van der Meulen, N(2008).Recall in older cancer patients: measuring memory for medical information.Gerontologist,48,149-57.
9. Kindelan, K,Kent, G(1987).Concordance between patients' information preferences and general practitioners' perceptions.Psychology & Health,1,399-409.
10. King, NJ(ed.),Remenyi, A(ed.)(1986).Health Care: A Behavioural Approach.Sydney:Grune and Stratton.
11. Maguire, P,Fairbairn, S,Fletcher, C(1986).Consultation skills of young doctors: II-Most young doctors are bad at giving information.Br Med J (Clin Res Ed),292,1576-8.
12. Sanson-Fisher, RW,Redman, S,Walsh, R(1991).Training medical practitioners in information transfer skills: the new challenge.Med Educ,25,322-33.
13. Silverman, JD,Kurtz, SM,Draper, J(1998).Skillsfor Communicating with Patients.Abingdon:Radcliffe Medical Press.
14. Tsai, MH,Lu, FH,Frankel, RM(2013).Learning to listen: Effects of using conversational transcripts to help medical students improve their use of open questions in soliciting patient problems.Patient Educ Couns,93,48-55.
15. van Weert, JC,Bolle, S,van Dulmen, S(2013).Older cancer patients' information and communication needs: What they want is what they get?.Patient Educ Couns,92,388-97.
16. Vygotsky, LS,Cole, M(1978).Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes.Massachusetts:Harvard University Press.
17. Yelon, SL(1996).Powerful Principles of Instruction.New York:Longman Publishers.

1. Tsai, Mei-hui(2017)."Have you heard of diabetes?"- The Use of Perspective-Checking Questions in Creating Knowledge Needs in Taiwanese Health Education Talks for Elderly Lay People.同心圓：語言學研究,43(1),47-76.