Role Playing Boosts Surgical Residents' Bedside Manner

A quick course in communication skills may improve surgical residents' interactions with some patients, researchers said.

Although it didn't significantly improve general communication skills, a two-hour program involving lectures and role playing resulted in significantly better scores on a case-specific content checklist (P=0.005), Rajiv Chandawarkar, MD, of the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington, Conn., and colleagues reported in the August issue of the Archives of Surgery.  MedPage Today