Social Skills and Medical Youth of Ukraine: a Leadership Overview

Abstract

The issue of the physician social skills is particularly important in the modern medical environment, particularly within the context of medical leadership. Unfortunately, it has been neglected by medical environment of Ukraine for many years, due to existing social stigma and methods of managing the Ministry of Health. Nowadays the theme is becoming actual, especially with regard to the concept of leadership, even though little educational activities are dedicated to the issue. Social skills of a physician should be defined within the context of his social competence, representing practical skills of interaction in the medical environment, and it mostly refers “physician „patient” interaction. The most “active” layers of the population is the youth, so youth awareness of the problem, particularly of medical youth, could change attitude of the society. The authors suggested on low awareness of the medical youth on the theme and conducted a survey with the 1 and 2 year medical students of the 2 Medical faculty of Bogomolets National medical university, situated in the capital of Ukraine and best representing attitude of youth to the problem. The findings confirmed low awareness of the “physician social skills” problem and low level of expression of social skills in the freshmen, though some components of the issue are included into the medical curriculum. The authors suggest the necessity of education, both on the level of medical Universities and mass media, for increasing awareness of the problem and helping medical students and practicing staff to acquire the missing skills.