| dc.description.abstract | Background: Effective communication skill of physicians is an important component
of high‐quality healthcare delivery and safe patient care. Communication is embedded
in the social and cultural contexts where it takes place. An understanding of medical
students' attitudes and learning communication skills would help to design and deliver
culturally appropriate medical education. The Communication Skills Attitude Scale
(CSAS) is a widely used and validated tool to measure the attitude of medical students
toward learning communication skills in different populations, settings, and countries.
However, there is no culturally adapted and validated scale in Bangla in the
Bangladesh context. This study aims to culturally adapt the CSAS into Bangla, and
validate it in a cohort of medical students in Bangladesh.
Methods: This study used a cross‐sectional survey design to collect data from
purposively selected 566 undergraduate medical students from the Rajshahi division.
The survey was conducted from January to December 2023. Descriptive statistics
like frequency distribution and measures of central tendency were used to measure
perception regarding communication skills. The sample adequacy was measured
through the Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin test. The internal consistency of the items was
identified using Cronbach's alpha (α) coefficients.
Result: The results of the study show that the Bangla version of the scale is feasible, valid,
and internally consistent in the context of a developing country, Bangladesh. The overall
internal consistency of the Bangla version is good since the value of Cronbach's alpha (α)
is 0.882. For PAS, the internal consistency is 0.933. While, for NAS, the value is 0.719.
The item‐wise average scores in the PAS indicate that female medical students are more
willing to learn communication skills compared with male students (α = 0.933). While, the
scores in the NAS indicate that the male students tend to have more negative attitude
toward learning communication skills compared with female students (α = 0.719).
Conclusion: The CSAS‐Bangla is a valid and reliable tool for assessing communica-
tion skill attitudes among Bangla speaking medical students. This scale can be used in V | en_US |
