The Medical Education Department (MED) is starting a beneficial course for doctors to develop inter personal skills

MUMBAI: Interactive skills are what doctors will now have to work on. Medicos will have to attend classes where they will learn how to create a good impression on and their families, how to communicate better, deal with strong emotions, deliver bad news and manage unruly crowds effectively.

A month after a legislation was enacted to protect doctors from being beaten up, the medical education department is all set to launch its people-management skill programme for doctors, which will be started from Sunday.

“We have enacted a law to protect doctors from aggrieved relatives. Now, we are launching a pilot project in which resident doctors will be give an insight into the root of detrimental behaviours by patients’ families so that they will be able to tackle tricky situations better,’’ Bhushan Gagrani, medical education secretary, told TOI on Saturday.

In the first phase, the MED proposes to train a batch of resident doctors from Grant Medical College (JJ Hospital, Mumbai), B J Medical College (Pune) and Government Medical College of Aurangabad. The duration of the session will be 16 hours, with four sessions of four hours each, and the classes will be held on every Sunday for a month. If it proves to be a success, then the programme will be extended to all the 17 government-run medical colleges in the state. The MED has also roped in a private organisation, Leadership Management International, for the project.

“With increasing awareness about health care, patients have become well informed and more demanding. This makes it imperative for doctors, nurses and all supporting health care professionals to understand the importance of handling patients with better listening, interpersonal and communication skills,’’ a senior MED official said.

At this juncture, when doctors are the main targets of agitated relatives of patients, it is necessary to bridge the gap between the medical professionals and the patients and the solution lies in training in soft skills. “Often there are language barriers and doctors need to show more patience. In this context, it is essential to develop interpersonal skills. Patients come from various strata and doctors need to hear them out properly to understand their problems better. The right attitude can also help,’’ the official said.

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