THE RISE AND FALL OF STUDENTS SKILL IN OBTAINING A MEDICAL HISTORY

A gradual shift towards a more humanistic conception of medicine has o ccurred in recent years. Along with this shift have come attempts by m edical educators to include interviewing and communication skills as p art of the medical curriculum. The current study evaluates the effecti veness of a clinical medicine curriculum which emphasizes interviewing skills. Between 1992 and 1994 the 292 graduates of the University of Connecticut School of Medicine participated in five clinical skills te aching and assessment programmes during the four years of medical scho ol. During each of these five programmes, the students' interviewing s kills were rated using the Arizona Clinical Interview Rating Scale (AC IR). The raters were standardized patients with whom they had just com pleted a medical encounter. Results show that students' development of skills differed, with closure items showing the greatest increase and social history items showing the greatest decline, with an overall in itial increase and then a decline in interviewing skills over the four years. Explanations for these findings include the de-emphasis of com munication skills during the clinical years and the culture of medicin e to which students are exposed during these years.