Teaching of Communications skills to health care students and professionals: current situation and perspectivas

Abstract

Currently it is widely accepted that the promotion of the relationship of health care professionals with their patients improves the service quality. The research on the benefits of efficient communication led some authors to consider that communication is the most important tool in health services. Thus, since the beginning of the nineties, medical schools in the Western world have increased their interest in the development of communication skills.  This work is based on the bibliographic research done via b-on. The used key words were: health care professional - patient communication, training in communication skills, students and health.  The analysis of the different training programs in matters of communication training targeted at students and health care professionals allowed to verify that there is a great variability and lack of consistency between the different training programs that currently are available.  Most of the studies included insufficient information on the communication skills that would be taught to the participants. In spite of the current situation some guidelines are set out for the future of teaching these skills in pre and post-graduate teaching in the health area.