At Changi General Hospital, we do not merely aim to equip our doctors with high technology medicine. We also aim to equip them with "High Touch" skills to handle some of these situations which will invariably enhance the doctor-patient relationship.

Hence, CGH developed a communications course for the doctors, entitled "Say It Right - A Professional Communication Skills Training Course for Doctors to Enhance Skills for Problematic Encounters". The course was specially developed by a team of UK doctors and lecturers from the Faculty of Medicine, University of Liverpool.

They included Dr Charles Hind, the Medical Director of Royal Liverpool University Hospital and an examiner for the communication module of the medical examinations. Dr Hind is also the author of the book "Developing Communication Skills in Medicine".

The trainers of the course included Dr Sue Kaney and Mrs Juliet Morton, both hailing from the Faculty of Medicine, University of Liverpool. Dr Kaney is a Clinical Psychologist. She is currently a lecturer in Health Psychology and has conducted workshops for doctors and nurses to handle situations involving death, dying and organ donation.

Mrs Morton teaches psychology to undergraduate and postgraduate students and conducts workshops and seminars on behavioural psycho-logy, family therapy and Aids counselling. She was also involved in the evaluation of an educational pro-gramme developed to help health professionals deal with bereavement and organ donation.

Besides CGH, doctors from other hospitals including KK Women's & Child's Hospital, Singapore General Hospital and other institutions in the SingHealth group were also invited to participate in the course. 80 doctors took part in this course, which was repeated over four days in March.

A major component of the course involved participants role-playing opposite professional actors, who acted as patients and their relatives. Maximising the learning experience, this offered the doctors a chance to play themselves and learn how to improve when speaking to their patients about sensitive issues.

As Guest-of-Honour Mr Chan Soo Sen, Parliamentary Secretary, Prime Minister's Office and Ministry of Health said, "Communication is an art. It is not an easy task to communicate well," adding that "The fact that doctors and their patients often come from different cultural and educational backgrounds underlines the need for good communication."

"The doctor may assume that the patient knows what he is talking about just because the patient nods his head in response to a question, while the patient may not know what is going on but just nod out of politeness," he added.

The one-day course aimed to impart to doctors the ability to integrate history taking and basic communication skills. Part of the course involved the management of crises, recognising emotions in patients and dealing with them, as well as managing emotions and communicating with relatives.

"Doctors have called for specific training in breaking bad news and handling contentious matters. They know they need good communication skills to be effective as health professionals," they said in a joint statement.

"Many feel uncertain and unskilled when facing such difficult and complex situations and recently published guidelines have recommended training in these areas," they added.

Course participant, Dr Tay Khoon Hean, consultant surgeon at CGH said: "This course will remind doctors to be aware of patients' feelings and treat them like their own relatives."

Another participant, Dr Ho Siew Hong, Registrar, Dept of Urology, shared that: "The doctors' communication course had opened up a different perspective. As participants, we were put through various role-playing scenarios with professional actors/actresses as patients."

"Being the first of its kind to be held in Singapore, it should act as a foundation stone to more communication courses for doctors, nurses and all staff involved in clinical care giving," Dr Ho added.