Teaching telephone management skills to pediatric residents in a pilot program using a standardized patient.

Background: Pediatricians spend a significant amount of time on the telephone but receive little formal training in telephone management skills. We found only two previous reports in the literature using a randomized controlled trial (RCT) that documented the effectiveness of a telephone management program for residents.

Methods: The goals of this pilot study were (1) to provide second year pediatric residents (PL-2s) an experimental telephone management educational program, using a standardized patient (SP); (2) to assess the PL-2s' affective skills and ability to address relevant content on a series of simulated telephone calls; and (3) to determine whether feedback to the experimental group would improve their telephone management skills.

Results: In this small pilot RCT using an SP intervention, no improvement was found in PL-2s' short-term or long-term telephone management skills.

Conclusion: Further studies involving larger number of residents and revised study design are needed in planning effective approaches to teaching these important skills to pediatric residents in our training program.