Communication Skills (9-Mar-2020)

As part of its endeavour to promote good practices of clinical governance and quality of patient care, MMC General Hospital, affiliated teaching hospital of Kabir Medical College and Sardar Begum Dental College organised a CME on importance of effective communication skills.

Dr. Jibran Umar Ayub, Assistant Professor of Gastroenterology delivered a talk on various components of doctor- patient encounter strategy including addressing patient concerns and ensuring welfare at the same time. He also did some effective role plays and explained SPIKES model in detail. Breaking the bad news to patients’ relatives who has a brain stem death, weaning a patient of the ventilator as part of “End of Life Care Pathway” and withdrawal of treatment are extremely challenging but can be done with right communication. He also threw some light on barriers to effective communication skills leading to increase no of casualties and patient complains and emphasised on the need for establishing a “Patient Advisory Liaison Service” like the ones NHS Hospitals have in UK.

Mr. Awais Ashfaq gave a very nice presentation on how to take a consent from a patient. There was some excellent display of innovative role plays and self-directed learning by the students.

Dr Azhar Shah, Associate Professor of Surgery SBDC gave very useful points on how to discharge a patient from medical and surgical care. This was preceded by a concise presentation by Miss. Saira Afzal on the same topic.

In the end there was a certificate distribution by CEO MMC General Hospital Engineer Mr. Usman Maqsood to the students who reiterated the need for doing such CMEs in future. The MMC General Hospital will hold a communication skills course under the supervision of Dr. Jibran Ayub and Dr. Azhar Shah for MRCP and FCPS exams for post graduate trainees in the very near future Inshallah.