Abstract
The objective of this study is to verify if medical students acquired knowledge about delivering bad news to patients during their undergraduate clinical courses. A questionnaire was applied to two groups: Group 1, which had not studied the theme and Group 2, which had already studied it. 29.41% of Group 1 knew about the Spikes Protocol and 100% of Group 2 (p=0.0001) knew about it. 25.88% of Group 1 and 81.01% of Group 2 (p=0.0001) were partially prepared for communication. 17.65% of Group 1 and 83.54% of Group 2 (p=0.0001) felt more secure after the study. 90.59% of Group 1 attributed a maximum grade to the importance of learning and 87.34% of Group 2 (p=0.8166) did the same. It was concluded that all students recognized the importance of learning about delivering bad news and the wide difference of knowledge in favor of Group 2 highlights the effectiveness of its approach during undergraduation.
Health communication; Truth disclosure; Physician-patient relations; Learning; Bioethics