Teaching Communication Skills on the Surgery Clerkship.

Background: Physician communication skills, linked to important patient outcomes, are rarely formally addressed after the pre-clinical years of medical school. We implemented a new communication skills curriculum during the third year Surgery Clerkship which was part of a larger curriculum revision found in a controlled trial to significantly improve students' overall communication competence.

Description: In three 2 hour workshops students, learned to address common communication challenges in surgery: patient education, shared decision-making, and delivering bad news.