Background: Tobacco addiction is an important public health issue. It is important for health professional to counsel the tobacco users for cessation.
Aim: To enhance communication skills of MBBS (Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery) students in counseling of tobacco users by using interactive teaching methods and examine it by using OSCE.
Materials and methods: It was a before and after comparison study. Communication skills of students were examined by standardized patients (investigators) by objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) method before and after intervention. All the students were trained to enhance the communication skills by role play, interactive session, anecdotes. Statistical analysis was done by using Paired t-test.
Results: The difference in scores at all the 3 stations before and after the intervention and also global scores before and after the intervention was statistically highly significant (P = 0.0001).
Conclusion and recommendation: Communication skills of students in counseling tobacco users improved after they were given role play, interactive session, anecdotes. Similar model can be used to improve the communication/counseling skills in other important health hazards.
Keywords: Communication skills; counseling; medical students; objective structured clinical exam; tobacco users.