Teaching self-awareness enhances learning about patient-centered interviewing

Purpose. To evaluate the effect of intensive attitudinal training on reside nts' learning the patient-centered interviewing skills required to establis h a healthy provider-patient relationship and to communicate effectively. Method. While teaching 53 residents patient-centered interviewing skills, t he authors also trained them to recognize previously unrecognized, negative attitudes that interfered with learning the skills. The authors, using an iterative, consensus-building process based on the residents' performances and personality data, identified a spectrum of responses to the educational intervention. Barriers to and facilitators of mastery of skills were analy zed and this information was used to help residents overcome skill deficits . Results. To varying degrees, 44 residents became aware of previously unreco gnized attitudes to the extent that they improved their patient-centered in terviewing skills. Six residents failed to develop awareness of negative at titudes and showed little learning and clinical use of the interviewing ski lls being taught. Three residents who rapidly developed superb interviewing skills showed no negative attitude towards using them. Conclusions. Pending a confirmatory hypothesis-testing study, the authors b elieve that, as residents learn how to conduct patient-centered interviews, training in awareness of interfering attitudes should accompany training i n skills.