Role of Attitude, Ethics, and Communication Module in Assessing Communication Skills among 1st-year Indian Medical Students

Background: Effective communication and interpersonal skills are vital for an eminent doctor-patient relationship.This must be adhered throughout the medical career and has become a must-know competency for standardized teaching and assessment in medical curriculum.Probably, a relative lack of research on the effects of specific communication training has been felt in at the beginning of the medical degree program.The newly developed attitude, ethics, and communication (AETCOM)-based communication training (offered by Medical Council of India/National Medical Commission, New Delhi) is a worthy approach to promote and improve the communicative skills among medical students.This article shows the usefulness of an early AETCOM intervention on patient-physician communication in medical curriculum among the newly joined medicos.Materials and methods: First-phase MBBS students of Government Medical College, Raigarh, Chhattisgarh, participating in current project were enlightened and assessed for an efficacious interpersonal communication skill.The survey consisted of a self-assessment of their skills as well as a standardized expert rating and an evaluation by means of Communication Skills Attitude Scale (CSAS) and Kalamazoo Essential Elements Communication Checklist (KEECC) questionnaire, as an essential element of AETCOM.Results: Students exhibited a considerable increase in communication skills in newly developed AETCOM module-based training.It was also observed that, among the 100 students, the mean score for positive attitude was 61.45 and the mean score for negative attitude was 29.66 from CSAS, showing a direct indicator that first-phase students have an optimistic attitude toward learning communication skills. Conclusion:Factual results of the study reflected that AETCOM-based training enabled students to acquire technical competence in communication and must be implemented throughout the MBBS teaching-learning program.These findings may be used to establish new literature review-based future communication training strategies.