ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a range of tools and techniques to help us in face-to-face communications in a wide range of settings. They include: effective listening, giving feedback, breaking bad news, core interviewing skills, presentation skills, contributing to meetings and being interviewed. Medical school provides communication skills training for medical students. Interpersonal communication can be easy, happy and positive; it can be difficult, uncomfortable and challenging, or it can be somewhere in between. The problems of communicating effectively have been acknowledged in reports produced by the British Medical Association, identifying both personal and organisational barriers to effective communication. The development of the skills of communication as a junior doctor is essential but often has to be learnt. Communication is a reciprocal process which enables the exchange of verbal and non-verbal messages between people to convey emotions, information, ideas and knowledge.
