Teaching communication skills: Using action methods to enhance role-play in problem-based learning

Walter F. Baile, Adam Blatner

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

49 Scopus citations

Abstract

SUMMARY STATEMENT: Role-play is a method of simulation used commonly to teach communication skills. Role-play methods can be enhanced by techniques that are not widely used in medical teaching, including warm-ups, role-creation, doubling, and role reversal. The purposes of these techniques are to prepare learners to take on the role of others in a role-play; to develop an insight into unspoken attitudes, thoughts, and feelings, which often determine the behavior of others; and to enhance communication skills through the participation of learners in enactments of communication challenges generated by them. In this article, we describe a hypothetical teaching session in which an instructor applies each of these techniques in teaching medical students how to break bad news using a method called SPIKES [Setting, Perception, Invitation, Knowledge, Emotions, Strategy, and Summary]. We illustrate how these techniques track contemporary adult learning theory through a learner-centered, case-based, experiential approach to selecting challenging scenarios in giving bad news, by attending to underlying emotion and by using reflection to anchor new learning.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)220-227
Number of pages8
JournalSimulation in Healthcare
Volume9
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 2014

Keywords

  • Bad news
  • Communication
  • Professionalism
  • Simulation

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Epidemiology
  • Medicine (miscellaneous)
  • Education
  • Modeling and Simulation

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