scholarly journals Effectiveness of a Comprehensive Health Literacy Consultation Skills Training for Undergraduate Medical Students: A Randomized Controlled Trial

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marise S. Kaper ◽  
Sijmen A. Reijneveld ◽  
Frank D. van Es ◽  
Janine de Zeeuw ◽  
Josué Almansa ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Randomized Controlled Trial ◽  
Health Literacy ◽  
Medical Students ◽  
Controlled Trial ◽  
Self Management ◽  
Training Intervention ◽  
Shared Decision ◽  
Undergraduate Medical Students ◽  
Randomized Controlled

Comprehensible communication by itself is not sufficient to overcome health literacy related problems. Future doctors need a larger scope of capacities in order to strengthen a patient’s autonomy, participation, and self-management abilities. To date, such comprehensive training-interventions are rarely embedded in curricula, nor systematically evaluated. We assessed whether comprehensive training increased these health literacy competencies, in a randomized controlled trial (RCT), with a waiting list condition. Participants were international undergraduate medical students of a Dutch medical faculty (intervention: 39; control: 40). The 11-h-training-intervention encompassed a health literacy lecture and five interactive small-group sessions to practise gathering information and providing comprehensible information, shared decision-making, and enabling of self-management using role-play and videotaped conversations. We assessed self-reported competencies (knowledge and awareness of health literacy, attitude, self-efficacy, and ability to use patient-centred communication techniques) at baseline, after a five and ten-week follow-up. We compared students’ competencies using multi-level analysis, adjusted for baseline. As validation, we evaluated demonstrated skills in videotaped consultations for a subsample. The group of students who received the training intervention reported significantly greater health literacy competencies, which persisted up to five weeks afterwards. Increase was greatest for providing comprehensible information (B: 1.50; 95% confidence interval, CI 1.15 to 1.84), shared decision-making (B: 1.08; 95% CI 0.60 to 1.55), and self-management (B: 1.21; 95% CI 0.61 to 1.80). Effects regarding demonstrated skills confirmed self-rated competency improvement. This training enhanced a larger scope of health literacy competences and was well received by medical students. Implementation and further evaluation of this training in education and clinical practice can support sustainable health literacy capacity building of future doctors and contribute to better patient empowerment and outcomes of consultations.

The impact of patient narratives on medical students’ perceptions of shared decision making: A randomized controlled trial

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martina Bientzle ◽  
Marie Eggeling ◽  
Simone Korger ◽  
Joachim Kimmerle
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Medical Students ◽  
Shared Decision Making ◽  
Medical Training ◽  
Controlled Trial ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Shared Decision ◽  
Randomized Controlled ◽  
Information Text ◽  
The Impact

BACKGROUND: Successful shared decision making (SDM) in clinical practice requires that future clinicians learn to appreciate the value of patient participation as early as in their medical training. Narratives, such as patient testimonials, have been successfully used to support patients’ decision-making process. Previous research suggests that narratives may also be used for increasing clinicians’ empathy and responsiveness in medical consultations. However, so far, no studies have investigated the benefits of narratives for conveying the relevance of SDM to medical students.METHODS: In this randomized controlled experiment, N = 167 medical students were put into a scenario where they prepared for medical consultation with a patient having Parkinson disease. After receiving general information, participants read either a narrative patient testimonial or a fact-based information text. We measured their perceptions of SDM, their control preferences (i.e., their priorities as to who should make the decision), and the time they intended to spend for the consultation.RESULTS: Participants in the narrative patient testimonial condition referred more strongly to the patient as the one who should make decisions than participants who read the information text. Participants who read the patient narrative also considered SDM in situations with more than one treatment option to be more important than participants in the information text condition. There were no group differences regarding their control preferences. Participants who read the patient testimonial indicated that they would schedule more time for the consultation.CONCLUSIONS: These findings show that narratives can potentially be useful for imparting the relevance of SDM and patient-centered values to medical students. We discuss possible causes of this effect and implications for training and future research.

A randomized controlled trial of a self-administered, online decision-aid (“Navya Patient Preference Tool”) to reduce decisional conflict in women with early breast cancer.

2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (15_suppl) ◽  
pp. 7033-7033
Author(s):  
Shalaka P Joshi ◽  
Lakshmi Ramarajan ◽  
Ojas Deshpande ◽  
Elizabeth Fernandes ◽  
Vaibhav Vanmali ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Breast Cancer ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Randomized Controlled Trial ◽  
Decision Aid ◽  
Controlled Trial ◽  
Decisional Conflict ◽  
Shared Decision ◽  
Breast Cancer Patients ◽  
Medical Encounter ◽  
Randomized Controlled

7033 Background: Shared decision making to confront choices with clinical equipoise, has been the privilege of those patients with access to time intensive consults with oncologists. We conducted a randomized controlled trial for breast cancer patients to use an online, self-administered, out-of-the-medical-encounter decision aid (DA) to choose between breast conserving surgery (BCS) and mastectomy. Methods: Navya Patient Preference Tool (Navya PPT) is a multilingual DA based on adaptive conjoint analysis of tradeoffs between cost, adverse effects of radiation, and breast conservation. Prior analysis established high internal reliability and external validity of the Navya PPT. Eligible cT1/2, cN0 breast cancer patients planned for surgery were block randomized, in 1:1:1 ratio, to receive the research questionnaire (RQ) to measure decisional conflict on choice of surgery (control, arm 1), Navya PPT followed by RQ (experimental, arm 2) or Navya PPT followed by RQ administered with key male family member (experimental, arm 3). Groups were stratified with respect to age, socio-economic status (SES) and educational level. The study was powered to detect a decrease in Decisional Conflict Index (DCI) by 0.25 (β-0.8, two sided α- 0.01). Results: Between June 2017 and December 2019, 247/255 patients were randomized to arm 1 (83), arm 2 (84), and arm 3 (80). Median age was 48 years (IQR 23-76), and median pT size was .5 cm (0.5-6 cm). 59% of patients were middle or lower SES and 46.2% had ≤ 12th grade education. DCI was significantly reduced in arm 2 as compared with arm 1 (1.34 vs. 1.65, Cohen’s d 0.49 (± 0.31) p<0.05) as well as in arm 3 as compared with arm 1 (1.30 vs. 1.65, Cohen’s d 0.54 (± 0.31) p<0.05). 80% (± 6%) of patients underwent surgery of choice as determined by Navya PPT. BCS rate was similar in all three arms (85.2, 88.9 and 86.5% respectively (p=0.779). Conclusions: Online, self-administered, adaptive DAs used out of the medical encounter can reduce decisional conflict and increase access to shared decision making for every patient; especially in practices with low doctor to patient ratios. Clinical trial information: IEC/0116/1619/001 .

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document