Communication skills of physiotherapy students with patients in outpatient department

Abstract

Communication is an activity of conveying information through the exchange of ideas, feelings, attitude, expectations, perceptions or commands by speech-verbal, nonverbal gestures, writings between people. A good therapist must be a good communicator. To assess the communication skills (CS) of physiotherapy students with patients in OPD and to compare the same at Undergraduate (UG) & Postgraduate (PG) level. A cross sectional survey with 100 students from tertiary hospital was randomly selected. And their interaction throughout the treatment was assessed by the assessor via a checklist. Average percentage score of communication skill of all students was 72 %. Student scored highest (78.83%) in history taking and physical examination whereas lowest score (60.75%) in interview initiation. Overall PG students showed better communication skills than the UG students. Among PG’s, history taking & physical examination category scored highest (85%) in communicating with patients whereas in UG’s, interview completion was dealt better with score of 73.37%. Overall 32% students were good and 51% students were fair in communicating with patient in OPD.