Habilidades comunicacionales del médico. Experiencia en el Departamento de Medicina de un hospital pediátrico.

BACKGROUND: Communication is an essential task to achieve quality in medical practice. It includes a series of acquired skills that collaborate in improving patient safety. Exploring physician´s communication skills could improve the care quality of an Institution. Our objective was to evaluate the attending physicians ‘communicative competence in a Pediatric Hospital, and to explore which professionals’ factors could be potentially associated with this competence quality. METHODS: Analytical, cross-sectional study. 40 doctor-patient interviews were observed from December 2018 to March 2019, in the Hospitalization Units. The Kalamazoo Essential Elements Communication Checklist (adapted) was used as a tool to assess competence in the communication process. RESULT: In 62.5% (25/40) of the observed interviews, communicative competence was evaluated as acceptable (95% CI 47.03-75.78). No association was found between physicians' practice experience or years since their graduation and the communicational acceptability. Female sex was an independent predictor for acceptable communication (OR: 10.3, 95% CI 1.9-53.1, p = 0.005). CONCLUSION: Communication skills of the medical staff observed in the Hospital were acceptable in 62.5% of the cases. Female sex resulted in an independent factor for acceptable communication. Even though the observed physicians´ communicative competence was generally acceptable, it is important to carry out actions aimed at optimizing communication skills since they do not only improve with experience.