If we were to conduct this work in further practices, we would perhaps be less flexible, in order to conduct similar amounts of training in each practice and stress the importance of the interviews and focus groups as part of the agreement for practices participating.
The survey asks the new faculty to rate their overall competence in medical interviewing, the importance of the medical interview to their practice, their confidence and adequacy of previous training in handling eight frequently encountered challenging communication scenarios, and whether they would benefit from additional communication training.
Using 10-point Likert scale questions, the survey also asked the faculty to rate their overall competence in medical interviewing, the importance of the medical interview to their practices, and their confidence and adequacy of previous training (eg, during medical school and residency) in handling eight frequently encountered challenging physician-patient communication scenarios.
The importance of these interviews lies in the fact that the interviewees are the last witnesses to a multi-secular activity that has basically disappeared.
Experienced faculty rated their competence in medical interviewing and the importance of the medical interview higher than recent graduates (ie, less than one year since training).
New faculty rated their overall competence in interviewing lower than the importance of the medical interview to practice.
The faculty rated (on a 10-point scale) the importance of the medical interview higher than their competence in interviewing; this difference was significant (average ± SD, 9.4 ± 1.0 vs 7.7 ± 1.2, P <.001).
