Report Emphasizes Need for Teaching Communication Skills in Medical Schools

By Holly Hayes

The Lucian Leape Institute at the National Patient Safety Foundation released a report entitled “Unmet Needs:Teaching Physicians to Provide Safe Patient Care.” The report concludes that “[U.S.] medical schools are not doing an adequate job of facilitating student understanding of basic knowledge and the development of skills required for the provision of safe patient care.”

The report’s 12 recommendations center on three main themes:

Medical schools and teaching hospitals need to create learning cultures that emphasize patient safety, model professionalism, encourage transparency, and enhance collaborative behavior. They should have zero tolerance policies for egregious disrespectful or abusive behavior.

Medical schools should teach patient safety as a basic science and ensure that students develop interpersonal and communication skills through experiences working in teams with nursing, pharmacy, and other professional students.

Medical schools and teaching hospitals need to launch intensive faculty development programs to enable all faculty to acquire sufficient patient safety knowledge and to develop the interpersonal skills in teamwork and collaboration that permit them to function effectively as teachers and role models for students.

A focus on teaching communication, teamwork, and conflict resolution skills in medical schools can be a major step toward more effective patient safety. We welcome your comments on this topic.