Identifying undergraduate medical students' attitudes towards communication skills learning: a pilot study

Despite the wealth of literature surrounding communication curricula within undergraduate medical education, there is a dearth or research that identi fies medical students' attitudes towards such curricula. To address this ga p in the research literature, first-year medical students at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom, were invited to discuss their attitud es towards communication skills learning. One audiotaped focus-group discus sion was conducted with five medical students The audiotape was transcribed in full and the transcript: was analysed manually using theme analysis.: T hree attitude-related themes emerged from the focus group discussion: (1) s tudents' positive attitudes towards communication skills learning; (2) stud ents' negative attitudes towards communication skills learning; and (3) rel ationships between students' attitudes and their education, age and communi cative abilities. The findings within each of these themes are discussed in this paper and their implications for Father research are outlined.