Illustration of different modalities of Role-Play for Medical Communication Skills at Undergraduate Level

Abstract

Role-play is commonly used as a learning method for teaching communication in medical institutions and there two types of role-play i.e. Round Robin and Relay`s methods. This study among our students and trainers to identify which role-play has better effect on students learning at college of Medicine, King Faisal University, Al Ahsa. All the first year students and trainers were included in the study. Students are divided into different groups and each group contains 9 – 11 students. Different scenarios are provided to the students with each physician and patient role. A pre-structured questionnaire was distributed among students and trainers to compare between the Role-play methods. The questionnaire included 15 statements related to the role-play methods based on Likert scale. Wilcoxon signed-rank test was applied to compare different items for both methods and to obtain p-value. The results showed that 221 students and 25 trainers filled the questionnaire. The Round Robin was found to have more influence on students` perception as compared to that for Relay`s except for item 4 i.e. role-play builds a team work where majority of participants agreed for Relay`s method. Similar results were found while checking perception of trainers. The results of statistical test for comparing both methods suggest that there is a significant difference in Round Robin and Relay`s method for most of the questions P- value < 0.05. We found that both methods of role-play used in communication skills sessions are helpful however, Round robin method has better outcome on learning as compared to Relay`s method