From threat to challenge—Improving medical students’ stress response and communication skills performance through the combination of stress arousal reappraisal and preparatory worked example-based learning when breaking bad news to simulated patients: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

Breaking bad news (BBN; e.g., delivering a cancer diagnosis) is perceived as one of the most demanding communication tasks in the medical field and associated with high levels of stress. Physicians’ increased stress in BBN encounters can negatively impact their communication performance, and in the long term, patient-related health outcomes. Although a growing body of literature acknowledges the stressful nature of BBN, little has been done to address this issue. Therefore, there is a need for appropriate tools to help physicians cope with their stress response, so that they can perform BBN at their best. In the present study, we implement the biopsychosocial model of challenge and threat as theoretical framework. According to this model, the balance between perceived situational demands and perceived coping resources determines whether a stressful performance situation, such as BBN, is experienced as challenge (resources > demands) or threat (resources < demands). Using two interventions, we aim to support medical students in shifting towards challenge-oriented stress responses and improved communication performance: (1) stress arousal reappraisal (SAR), which guides individuals to reinterpret their stress arousal as an adaptive and beneficial response for task performance; (2) worked examples (WE), which demonstrate how to BBN in a step-by-step manner, offering structure and promoting skill acquisition.

Published: 2023-05-10

Authors: Michel Bosshard, Felix Michael Schmitz, Sissel Guttormsen, Urs Markus Nater, Patrick Gomez, Christoph Berendonk

Tags: Arousal, Breaking bad news, Challenge, Medical education, Psychophysiology, Reappraisal, Stress, Threat, Worked example