Future Physicians’ Professional Communication Skills Training at US Universities: Structure and Content

Professional training of physicians able to apply their skills in order to reflect the patients’ needs related to care, prevention and treatment of the diseases is one of the most common current trends in higher medical education. Due to the development of patient-centered relationships of physicians the attention of medical educators and scientists to the problem of professional communication and factors stimulating its development has grown drastically. The medical schools and colleges of US universities have already reached significant results in this area. Communicative training is one of the primary educational tasks of higher medical education in this country. Communicative courses are an obligatory component of professional training programs and curricula throughout all years of study. Valuable experience of the USA in this sphere may be useful for the educational development of our country. The paper analyzes the process of communicative training of future physicians at US universities; researches on the structure, content and evolution of professional communication programs and courses during the undergraduate years at medical schools and colleges. The key communicative skills have been defined and described. The main aspects of educational methodology referring to the evaluation of the communicative skills have been determined. The importance of physicians’ professional communication and its influence on the treatment outcomes have been stated. Moreover, the paper discusses the difficulties of the professional communicative training implementation into the undergraduate university curriculum in the USA and describes the ways of solving the problematic aspects of professional communication training of medical students caused by the personal ethical and educational issues.