Cross-sectional observational study on teaching the communication of bad news

Introduction: healthcare professionals need to develop skills through knowledge, to handle complex situations in front of patients and/or their families, regarding the communication of bad news. It is extremely important that medical education offers the best educational approaches for training verbal and nonverbal communication skills to provide a clear and appropriate message in the face of these unavoidable circumstances in day-to-day medical practice. Objective: to investigate the need for training medical students to convey bad news to patients and/or their families. Method: a cross-sectional observational study was implemented, with a qualitative approach based on a closed survey to medical students on their ability to communicate bad news, where participants were compared with each other, thus obtaining a conclusion. The survey had 88 participants and the results were presented in Excel tables and figures generated from an online survey. Results: the search revealed that students of public universities (48,9 % of the experiment) and private universities (51,1 % of the experiment) in general never promoted the information of bad news to a patient and/or family, because it was found that only 21,6 % of the total had already had this experience throughout their education. Respondents, regardless of their age or year of graduation in medicine, showed insecurity about their own knowledge and skills to give bad news. Conclusion: the sample analyzed in the survey shows, with a large statistical difference, the need to improve the teaching methods for giving bad news in universities, because only 10,2 % of the sample considered the instruction they received during their education to promote this fact to be very satisfactory. We believe that it is necessary to introduce a practical method so that students, as physicians, do not feel so hesitant to communicate such sensitive news to patients and/or family