Basic Communication Skills Program for First-Year Medical Students: Assessment of the Effectiveness of the Program

Objectives: The study aims to introduce the basic communication skills program for first-year medical students and to evaluate its effectiveness at the second level of Kirkpatrick's evaluation method. Material and Methods: In this study, to evaluate the effectiveness of the program, students were evaluated before and after the basic communication skills training. The students (n=127, 87%) participating in both evaluations were included in the study. During the evaluations, each student made a 5 to 6 minute-long conversation with a simulated classmate performing a structured case. Each student was individually evaluated by his/her small group trainer using an evaluation scale including items on critical basic communication skills. Results: The total score was 57.97 +/- 10.69 for pre-training and 77.55 +/- 11.26 for post-training (p= 0.000). There was no significant difference between the pre-training scores of female and male students. The post-training scores of the female students were significantly higher than the scores of male students (p= 0.034). Conclusions: The basic communication skills program for first-year students was effective in gaining basic communication skills. The female students showed a more significant progress in basic communication skills than male students. This program and the method to evaluate its effectiveness may set an example for other medical schools.