Breaking Bad News: A Randomized Trial Assessing Resident Performance After Novel Video Instruction

Introduction Delivering bad news to patients is an essential skill for physicians, which is often developed through patient encounters. Residents in our program participate in objective structured clinical examinations (OSCEs) on an annual basis to evaluate their skills in these scenarios. Our objectives were to develop an educational video and determine if an educational video provided to residents prior to OSCEs would improve performance. Methods Previous OSCEs were reviewed to identify best practices and to create a four-minute video highlighting the “do’s and don’ts” of delivering bad news. Residents in two post-graduate year (PGY) classes were randomized to watch the video prior to or after a standardized patient encounter. Three masked reviewers assessed resident empathy, attention, and understanding on 10 five-point Likert scales and assigned a total score (scale: 0-50). Hedges’ g was used to assess mean scores and effect size. Results A total of 17 residents participated in the evaluation: nine in the pre-OSCE video group and eight in the control group. Residents randomized to the video prior to the patient encounter had a mean score of 37.01 (SD=3.6). Residents randomized to the control group had a mean score of 35.38 (SD=4.85). Hedges’ g was 0.37 (95% CI: -0.59 to 1.33). Conclusion Residents randomized to the video group had a small increase in OSCE performance, which was not statistically significant. The novel video was helpful and addresses the need for a quick pre-assessment educational tool, though interns and graduating medical students may be a more appropriate target audience for instruction.