Improving Breaking Bad News in Pediatrics by Simulated Communication

Improving Breaking Bad News in Pediatrics by Simulated Communication: The Prospective Randomized Controlled SimCom Study

Breaking bad news, especially a death notice, is an essential part of the medical profes-sional communication. Being inadequately trained in those skills this may result in un-pleasant psychosocial consequences for everyone involved.

This prospective, single-center, randomized controlled trial evaluated the delivery of a death notice to simulation parents out of the perspective of these parents (professional actors), the participants (students) and by video analysis. The simulation patient has prior unexpectedly died during a simulated resuscitation. The intervention group broke the bad news after receiving a short communication

Conversations about death and dying present discomfort for both healthcare professionals, patients and their families. These conversations, emotionally laden, pose lasting challenges and impact decision-making. Despite extensive medical training, physicians often lack adequate communication skills for such conversations, leading to frustration and distress. Delivering bad news, particularly in pediatrics, requires managing not only medical intricacies but also emotional impact. Communication skills, crucial for such scenarios, are typically developed over time through observation and practice, yet are often inadequately emphasized in medical training. Our study aimed to assess the impact of communication training on medical students delivering death notifications to simulation parents in pediatric simulation scenarios.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Medical students, enrolled at the Medical University of Vienna.
• Successful completion the mandatory basic life support training "Block 16" in the third year of medical training and
• Successful completion of the mandatory communication seminar "Ärztliche Gesprächsführung B" also in the third year of medical training.
• Obtained written informed consent.

Exclusion Criteria:

• quality of the obtained video recordings were unsatisfactory and not usable for analysis
• unmet inclusion criteria