The following is a summary of “Clinician communication after discovery of a soft marker of aneuploidy during pregnancy: A mixed methods assessment of a communication workshop,” published in the November 2023 issue of Obstetrics and Gynecology by Johnson, et al.

Soft signs of aneuploidy are often seen on maternal ultrasounds, but telling the patient about them makes them more anxious. No one knows if speech training changes a patient’s feelings about soft marker sharing. For a study, researchers sought to find out how clinicians felt about a communication workshop based on simulations and how the workshop affected patients’ fear, understanding, and opinion of the quality of communication.

In 2019, they held a workshop on communication for clinicians at an academic school. Before and after the workshop, they used counseling to measure clinicians’ nervousness and confidence. To find out how the workshop affected patients, they polled pregnant women who had an echogenic intracardiac focus, choroid plexus cyst, or urinary tract dilation before and after the workshop. Anxiety was the main result. Some of the people who answered did a semi-structured interview. Thematic analysis was used to look at the interviews.

Twelve doctors and nurses took part. Of the 49 eligible patients, 43% filled out a survey before the workshop, and 44% of the 90 eligible patients filled out a survey after it. The chance of having a lot of worry after the training was about the same as before (aRR 1.7, 95% CI 0.6–4.2). Twenty people were asked to come in for an interview. Qualitative research showed that how people saw the quality of communication depended on their backgrounds, how the talk made them feel, and how the therapist spoke. A single training for clinicians did not make patients feel less anxious, but how clinicians act and tailor their help to each patient greatly impacts how they feel about counseling about soft signs of aneuploidy.

Source: sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2468784723001198