"Patient's Family Wants an Update": A Curriculum for Senior Medical Students to Deliver Telephone Updates for Hospitalized Patients.

Introduction: Residents have the important task of updating family members of hospitalized patients, often by telephone. There are limited curricula dedicated to preparing medical students for this task, which will become their responsibility as residents. Methods: We created a virtual workshop, including four patient cases, to facilitate teaching senior medical students enrolled in an internal medicine residency preparation course. Students alternated role-playing either physician or family member. We assessed performance using a self-assessment rubric before (preworkshop) and after (postworkshop) a didactic session. We compared pre- and postworkshop scores using Results: Thirty-nine students completed the pre- and postworkshop evaluation (response rate: 70%). The mean score on the preworkshop self-assessment was 83% ( Discussion: Our workshop was effective in teaching medical students a structured format for providing telephone updates and was well received. The workshop was also effective when delivered virtually (with videos off) to mimic the non-face-to-face communication that occurs when delivering family updates by telephone. The curriculum could be expanded to other learner groups.