The effectiveness of integrating making every contact count into an undergraduate medical curriculum

Objective: To evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of integrating Making Every Contact Count (MECC) using Healthy Conversation Skills (HCS) into an undergraduate medical curriculum and test the performance of an associated assessment. Methods: Concepts were introduced to second year students through lectures, small group seminars, role-plays and a new Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE). station. Students' feedback was gathered and their examination performance was analysed. Results: MECC/HCS was integrated into the undergraduate medical curriculum at Leicester Medical School. Teaching had a positive impact on the students' self-reported confidence in carrying out MECC (7/10 to 9/10, p > 0.001) and in their self-reported likelihood of doing so (7/10 to 9/10, p > 0.001). The MECC OSCE station was good at discriminating between students' abilities (group discrimination metric 4.36–4.44). The small negative alpha differences for the MECC/HCS station (−0.032 and − 0.028) indicated this station positively contributed to the overall reliability of the assessment. Conclusion: It was feasible to integrate MECC/HCS into an undergraduate medical curriculum, with a positive impact on students' confidence. Innovation: In addition to teaching, this study describes the development and testing of OSCE stations to assess students' MECC skills in simulated clinical scenarios.