%0 Journal Article
%T Assessing medical students' attitudes towards learning communication skills ¨C which components of attitudes do we measure?
%A Tor Anvik
%A Tore Gude
%A Hilde Grimstad
%A Anders Baerheim
%A Ole B Fasmer
%A Per Hjortdahl
%A Are Holen
%A Terje Risberg
%A Per Vaglum
%J BMC Medical Education
%D 2007
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/1472-6920-7-4
%X The CSAS questionnaire was mailed simultaneously to all students (n = 3055) of the four medical schools in Norway in the spring of 2003. Response from 1833 students (60.0%) were analysed by use of SPSS ver.12.A Principal component analysis yielded findings that differ in many respects from those of earlier papers. We found the CSAS to measure three factors. The first factor describes students' feelings about the way communication skills are taught, whereas the second factor describes more fundamental attitudes and values connected to the importance of having communication skills for doctors. The third factor explores whether students feel that good communication skills may help them respecting patients and colleagues.Our findings indicate that in this sample the CSAS measures broader aspects of attitudes towards learning communication skills than the formerly described two-factor model with PAS and NAS. This may turn out to be helpful for monitoring the effect of different teaching strategies on students' attitudes during medical school.Medical students' attitudes towards doctor-patient communication have for long been a concern among medical teachers, curriculum planners and policy makers [1,2] and have been addressed in many studies.Kaufmann [3] constructed the Attitudes Towards Medical Communication Scale with 41 items and used it in a cross-sectional study on 203 students in their first, second and fourth year respectively. This study, which was published in 2001, showed that female students had more positive attitudes than male students, and that first and second year students had more positive attitudes than fourth year students.In 2001 de Valck [4] presented a questionnaire measuring students' attitudes towards full disclosure versus non-disclosure in breaking bad news. Following one cohort of students for three years (53 students responded in all three years) they found that students became more in favour of non-disclosure as they progressed through medical
%U http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6920/7/4