Interpersonal and communication skills training for radiology trainees using a rotating peer supervision model (microteaching).

February 1999, the Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) formulated six core competencies that a new practitioner should possess, but left it to the residency and fellowship programs to define the necessary skills and implement a process of teaching, assessment, and process improvement (1). Programs were mandated to create a process using results of assessments to achieve progressive improvement in residents’ competence and performance. Although it is relatively easy to establish comparative metrics for factual knowledge (eg, written in-service examinations) or even manual skills (eg, procedure logs, phantom simulation), traditional methods fall short when sharpening soft skills becomes the goal (2). The ACGME lists interpersonal and communication skills among its core competencies. The challenge rests not only in the definition of what the most effective interpersonal and communication skills are, but also in how they are to be taught, measured, and integrated into the ACGME’s other core competency of practice-based learning and improvement. Habits of interpersonal conduct are difficult to instill or break in a classic lecture. New behaviors are unlikely to emerge from reading assigned material only. People-skill