The technology of teaching clinical communication skills to medical students

The article analyzed the cutting edge practices of healthcare provider-patient communication used in healthcare systems worldwide and their adaptation to the Russian sociocultural context made to develop an academic course aiming to enhance communicative competence of prospective doctors. We drew upon the agenda and approaches described in the publications of overseas researchers and modified them to regard the Russian distinctions to design the structure and content of this course. Based on the practical and sociocultural importance the syllabus of this course is intended to comprise a study of different stages of a medical encounter and the steps made by clinicians; familiarization with the strategies and techniques for enhancing clinical communication; managing communication failures in encounters fraught with difficulties. A thorough analysis of various conversational turns helping to achieve therapeutic goals, cross-cultural barriers, emotional and psychological triggers impeding communication was done. The author identified and described a didactic toolkit, which can enable students to become familiar with important theoretical tenets and interiorize them by doing various interactive practice-based assignments. The training of prospective clinicians based on the educational technology described in the article will help to increase their professional competency, thus making their activities more successful and their patients more compliant.