Practical approach to train and assess professional behaviour of medical students

The gradual decline of doctor-patient communication skills and professional attitudes and behaviour have steadily been observed in all countries across the globe. This deterioration has resulted in repeated and renewed demands to make medical schools more aligned to the necessity to train professional behaviours in undergraduate medical study. Medical educators have been criticised for not effectively training and rigorously assessing these skills. Training of behaviour has been abstracted in teaching of ethics and communication skills which in most of the cases is based on theoretical “preaching” lectures and use of book/guide and in some cases, training using supervised role-playing sessions at the best of options. Although good communication skills are essential for an optimal doctor-patient relationship and certainly contribute to improved health outcomes, still other aspects of behaviour are not covered. Furthermore, while the need for training on professional behaviour is specified as a requirement in the adopted graduate outcomes, formal training in these skills has been fragmentary and not clearly addressed in curriculum documents of the medical colleges in Iraq. A practical approach is here proposed to support medical colleges to bridge this gap. The methods of design, construction and use of standardised checklists for training medical students and assessing their acquisition of behavioural (affective) skills is described