Context  The teaching and assessment of clinical communication have become central components of undergraduate medical education in the UK. This paper recommends the key content for an undergraduate communication curriculum. Designed by UK educationalists with UK schools in mind, the recommendations are equally applicable to communication curricula throughout the world. Objectives  This paper is intended to assist curriculum planners in the design, implementation and review of medical communication curricula. The document will also be useful in the education of other health care professionals. Designed for undergraduate education, the consensus statement also provides a baseline for further professional development. Methods  The consensus statement, based on strong theoretical and research evidence, was developed by an iterative process of discussion between communication skills leads from all 33 UK medical schools conducted under the auspices of the UK Council of Clinical Communication Skills Teaching in Undergraduate Medical Education. Discussion  How this framework is used will inevitably be at the discretion of each medical school and its implementation will be determined by different course designs. Although we believe students should be exposed to all the areas described, it would be impractical to set inflexible competency levels as these may be attained at different stages which are highly school‐dependent. However, the framework will enable all schools to consider where different elements are addressed, where gaps exist and how to generate novel combinations of domains within the communication curriculum. It is hoped that this consensus statement will support the development and integration of teaching, learning and assessment of clinical communication.

BackgroundEvidence-based medicine (EBM) is maturing from its early focus on epidemiology to embrace a wider range of disciplines and methodologies. At the heart of EBM is the patient, whose informed choices have long been recognised as paramount. However, good evidence-based care is more than choices.DiscussionWe discuss six potential ‘biases’ in EBM that may inadvertently devalue the patient and carer agenda: limited patient input to research design, low status given to experience in the hierarchy of evidence, a tendency to conflate patient-centred consulting with use of decision tools; insufficient attention to power imbalances that suppress the patient’s voice, over-emphasis on the clinical consultation, and focus on people who seek and obtain care (rather than the hidden denominator of those that do not seek or cannot access care).SummaryTo reduce these ‘biases’, EBM should embrace patient involvement in research, make more systematic use of individual (‘personally significant’) evidence, take a more interdisciplinary and humanistic view of consultations, address unequal power dynamics in healthcare encounters, support patient communities, and address the inverse care law.

Observed findings are consistent with the notion that mothers and teachers interpret symptom statements in terms of behaviors that are most relevant for their daily concerns.

Examined reliability and validity of the parent version of the Child Symptom Inventory (CSI-4) in 247 boys between 6.0 and 10 years 11 months old referred for evaluation of behavioral and emotional problems. The CSI-4 is a behavior rating scale whose items correspond to the symptoms of disorders defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed. [DSM-IV]; American Psychiatric Association, 1994). Results indicated satisfactory internal consistency reliability, test-retest reliability, and temporal stability over a 4-year period for most symptom categories. CSI-4 ratings converged and diverged in a theoretically consistent pattern with respective scales of the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL; Achenbach, 1991a) and the Diagnostic Interview for Children and Adolescents-Revised-Parent Version (DICA-P; Reich, Shayka, & Taibleson, 1991). Discriminant validity was established in that boys with specific DICA-P diagnoses received significantly higher corresponding CSI-4 parent symptom ratings than boys not so diagnosed. Clinical utility (sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive power, negative predictive power) was evaluated for screening cutoffs based on categorical (DSM-IV) and dimensional (normative distribution of Symptom Severity scores) scoring methods.