Background: We aimed to identify which attitudes and emotions accompany latter-year medical students as they experience situations where bad news is communicated.
Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted using the computer-assisted web interview (CAWI) methodology in a group of 321 fifth- and sixth-year medical students from 14 medical universities in Poland. Correlations were analyzed using Pearson's χ2 test. For the categorical variables, subject profiles were analyzed using K-means clustering.
Results: Students' self-assessments of their competence in delivering bad news (DBN) differed depending on the type of experience they had with it. More than half of the students had observed a situation of DBN (63.6%) and as many as 26.5% of the participants had received bad news themselves. These two groups were less likely to declare a lack of DBN-related skills (43.4% and 33.4%, respectively) than others. In this study, 9% of the students had personally delivered bad news. Only 13.4% of these students rated their DBN skills as insufficient. They were also the least likely to express concern regarding high levels of stress (29.6%) and anxiety (48%).
Conclusions: The ability to personally deliver bad medical news to a patient was the most effective form of gaining experience in DBN. Being a bearer of bad news may help students develop their own strategies for coping with difficult emotions and develop their professional competences, leading to improved medical care and patient comfort.
Keywords: delivering bad news; diagnosis; doctor–patient relationship; medical communication; truth disclosure.