[Evaluation of a two year curriculum in psychosocial and psychosomatic medicine--handling emotions and communicating in a patient centred manner]

Psychosomatic Medicine is aiming at a comprehensive understanding of patient's requests. This requires patient-centred communication. During the two-year course for "Psychosomatic Medicine"of the Lower-Austrian Medical Chamber at the Danube-University Krems relevant techniques are trained. This paper reports on the analysis of 120 video-consultations with simulated patients (30 participants, two per participant before and after the training) using a modified version of the Roter Interaction Analysis System (RIAS). Results show a considerable increase in participant's ability to respond to emotional utterances and to use techniques of patient-centred communication: percentage of appropriate utterances related to the sum of all utterances: from 9.78 ± 3.5 to 13.56 ± 4.7 (ANOVA with repeated measures: p>0.001). Furthermore, participants allow patients longer stretches of uninterrupted speech: increase from 1.76 ± 1.4 to 2.47 ± 2.3 utterances (p>0.001) helping them into a narrative style of conversation.