Second Edition (2005)

Suzanne Kurtz , Jonathan Silverman, Juliet Draper

Radcliff Publishing, 369 pages

Overall rating: Epic

Strengths: Foundational piece of literature that informs the organized teaching and learning of patient-physician communication

Weakness: Neglects the patient centred content of the interview

Audience:  Clinician-teachers and communication program directors

Teaching and Learning Communication Skills in Medicine is the companion book to Skills for Communicating with Patients.  It takes the theoretical constructs used to understand the clinician-patient interaction and shows how to teach and learn them.  The book starts at the basics examining the why, how and what to teach and moves to progressively more complex areas.  Subjects span:

• Creating structure for learners
• Running small groups session
• Providing feedback
• Utilizing technology
• Developing a communications curriculum
• Supporting faculty in a communication curriculum

The authors use a rich array of educational theory to support the ideas they advocate.  In particular, they draw about Kolb’s ideas about experiential learning to underlie their thesis.  The most interesting idea they advocate is flipping the skills used for clinician-patient interaction to parallel and direct clinician-learner interactions.  This book balances well the theoretical aspects with practical and easily implementable teaching methods.

The only short comings of Kurtz et al’s ideas lie in the same challenges of their original book – the lack of attention given to patient-centred content.  Nonetheless, this book is excellent.  I feel using the knowledge contained within its pages will significantly enhance my teaching methodologies and ability to write curriculum.  I think this book would be extremely valuable for all clinician-teachers and is a must read for all communication course directors.