June 19, 2023
2 min read
As the healthcare industry continues to evolve, one thing remains clear: communication is key. Effective communication is essential for ensuring that patients receive the best possible care. If we can support junior doctors with the communication skills to get this right at the start of their medical journey then they will be well equipped for future consultations throughout their career.
Something that hasn’t been widely publicised is that junior doctors don’t tend to get any formal communication skills training once they leave medical school. Furthermore, there is growing research on the relationship between Emotional Intelligence (EI) and “Good Medical Practice” from the General Medical Council in which EI is seen as a critical component of effective communication.
Recently, KAI Conversations has been working on a project with the @East Suffolk North Essex Foundation Trust to help junior doctors improve their communication skills through the use of Conversational AI technology.
This trial led by Hasanthi Gooneratne, an innovator in Medical Education is an exciting development that could revolutionise the way we think about medical training and communication in the NHS.
The trial involves junior doctors developing their communication skills in a safe and controlled environment and using KAI’s unique Conversational AI technology to analyse “breaking bad news conversations” with text, facial and acoustic AI.
The participants were all given the same scenario which involved an actor playing a patient’s relative in a role play where they are being told upsetting news about their loved one. Each interaction was recorded and analysed against an established reference framework for breaking bad news that is used in the NHS. The AI analysed the doctor’s communication and looked at several key metrics including speaker balance which revealed how much time was spent talking by each party, analysis on the types of questions asked and points of empathy identified throughout the conversation. The objective feedback picked up by the AI was validated by a clinical psychotherapist John Parr who is an expert in EI and will be used to create personalised communication skills training to target specific areas of development.
Further information on the trial will be released in a series of posts but if you’d like to know more in the meantime please Contact Us