Advances in Medical Education and Practice (Dec 2019)
A Response to the Views of Medical Students Towards Learning Communication Skills from Chitwan Medical College [Letter]
Abstract
Ishwar Singh Malhi, Mohammed Bilal Khan Manchester Medical School, Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health University of Manchester, Manchester, UKCorrespondence: Ishwar Singh Malhi; Mohammed Bilal KhanManchester Medical School, Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health University of Manchester, Manchester, UKEmail [email protected]; [email protected] would like to extend our gratitude to the contributing writers of this article in providing an insight into the attitudes of recently admitted undergraduate medical students on learning communications skills from Chitwan Medical College, Bharatpur, and would like to present some of our comments on the study.1The article demonstrates that there is a need to integrate communication skills into the current college curriculum, finding that a large proportion of students were not aware of the importance of communication skills for a physician (n=24), with almost half unsure about the ability to learn the skill itself (n=40).1 Nevertheless, as highlighted in the paper, the small sample size based on a single university’s applicants (n=99) impedes the ability to compare and contrast the study, in turn limiting its generalizability. Moreover, the characteristics of participants within the questionnaire included their prior educational institutions, yet the relevance of this has not been identified. Further investigations into whether there is a connection to the aforementioned would highlight any significance.View the original paper by Timilsina and colleagues
