Communication laboratory: expanding medical students' skills for interview practice

This paper presents an activity named "communication laboratory", in which, through recording and discussing simulated interviews ("interactive video feedback" technique), the aim is to capacitate medical students with the communicational skills needed for performing medical tasks. This activity is included in the second year of the medical course, and is part of the medical psychology program. Careful and detailed observation of the recorded images has revealed this to be a very powerful instrument for detecting and developing the relational and communicational capacities. We are still at the phase of performing systematized evaluations that will allow us, in the future, to verify the efficacy of the activity and to measure the repercussion that it will have on the development of students in their medical practice activities.