Longitudinal effects of medical students' communication skills on future performance.

ABSTRACT Background: The Essential Elements of Communication (EEC) were developed from the Kalamazoo consensus statement on physician–patient communication. The Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU) has adopted a longitudinal curriculum to use the EEC both as a learning tool during standardized patient encounters and as an evaluation tool culminating with the end of preclerkship objective-structured clinical examinations (OSCE). Medical educators have recently emphasized the importance of teaching communication skills, as evidenced by the United States Medical Licensing Examination testing both the integrated clinical encounter (ICE) and communication and interpersonal skills (CIS) within the Step 2 Clinical Skills exam (CS). Purpose: To determine the associations between students' EEC OSCE performance at the end of the preclerkship period with later communication skills assessment and evaluation outcomes in the context of a longitudinal curriculum spanning both undergraduate medical ...