Abstract:

Health communication is a discipline with the purpose of raising individual and public awareness about diseases and preventive measures, consisting of communication strategies and practices that focus on the protection and improvement of health as well as gaining health back. In spite of the widening scope of health communication, what is emphasized is the micro-level of the area with the traditional perspective, and communication between providers of health care service and patients has been observed to have primary significance. In the literature, it has been acknowledged that communication education should be added to the curriculums of medical schools due to the contribution successful management of doctor-patient communication could make to the achievement of desired results in health care service. This study, done in line with the aforementioned agreement in the literature, has been designed to learn whether 104 Turkish medical faculties, which provide undergraduate medical education, has added any theoretical courses or education centered on communication skills to their curriculum, and to determine how they construct their courses and education aimed at improving communication skills. The findings of the research have shown that the majority of the faculties has theoretical communication education in their curriculums. It has been seen that some faculties offer theoretical communication education as a separate course in their curriculums while some others integrate it into other courses as a topic.

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