Effectiveness of Integrating Simulation with Art-Based Teaching on Attitudes of Oncology Fellows for Learning Communication Skills: a Pilot Study

Integration of simulated practice with art-based teaching strategy can be effective for learning communication skills. This pilot study outlines the effect of integrating simulation with art-based teaching strategies on the attitudes of oncology fellows toward learning communication skills. The study was conducted in Iran using a quasi-experimental method. The participants were the oncology fellows of Tehran University of Medical Sciences (n = 19). The intervention was 1-day workshop, followed by integrating simulation with different types of art-based teaching methods. The Communication Skills Attitude Scale (CSAS) was used to assess the effectiveness of the developed model. Our finding indicated that the mean values of oncology fellows' attitude scores in all domains of CSAS including importance in medical context (53.26 ± 2.13vs 41.00 ± 5.01, p = 0.001), excuse (25.84 ± 3.01vs14.36 ± 2.62, p = 0.001), learning (23.26 ± 1.40vs8.89 ± 2.25, p = 0.001), overconfidence (13.10 ± 1.44 vs 5.57 ± 1.38, p = 0.001), and overall (115.47 (5.51) vs 69.84(6.51) p = 0.001) increased significantly after the intervention as compared with before it. Findings support the hypothesis that using integrated training methods may help oncology fellows to appreciate the importance of communication skills learning. The implications of this hypothesis are that the inclusion of integrating simulation with art-based teaching strategies in the medical curriculum can improve the attitude of oncology fellows during their education.