Does a new integrated PBL curriculum with specific communication skills classes produce Pre Registration House Officers (PRHOs) with improved communication skills?

Over recent years communication skills training has played an increasingly important role in UK medical curricula. When The University of Liverpool reformed its medical curriculum in 1996 from a traditional lecture-based curriculum to an integrated problem-based learning curriculum formal communication skills training was introduced into the course. The paper deals with a comparison between PRHOs' ideas about communication competencies for PRHOs who did receive communication skills training and those involved in a traditional curriculum without formal communication training. This has involved distributing questionnaires to PRHOs and their educational supervisors, holding focus groups with PRHOs and interviewing educational supervisors. Data have been collected on the last cohort of the traditional curriculum and first cohort of the new curriculum to allow comparisons between cohorts. The PRHO questionnaires show that both cohorts feel they are good communicators but the focus groups show different reasons for this. The traditional graduates feel it is because doctors are 'natural communicators' and those skills can't be taught. The PBL graduates relate their communication skills to their undergraduate tuition and found they used these techniques when communicating as PRHOs. Both the questionnaires and interviews with the consultants demonstrate they feel the communication of PRHOs has significantly improved.