A Latin American, Portuguese and Spanish consensus on a core communication curriculum for undergraduate medical education

The autors would like to acknowledge the contributions of the participantsin the panel of experts. Their comments have helped us to reach moresuitable learning outcomes.They also want to thank the Universidad Francisco de Vitoria (Madrid, Spain)the financial support for the achievement of the project To present learning outcomes in clinical communication for a Core Curriculum for medical undergraduate students in Latin America, Portugal and Spain (LAPS-CCC) and to establish an expert network to support a transnational implementation. Through an iterative process, an international group of 15 experts developed an initial set of learning outcomes following a review and discussion of relevant international and local literature. A two-round Delphi survey involving 46 experts from 8 countries was performed. Quantative and qualitative analisis permited the definition of the final consensus. The initial proposal included 157 learning outcomes. The Delphi process generated 734 comments and involved the modification, deletion and addition of some outcomes. At the end of the process, a consensus was reached on 136 learning outcomes grouped under 6 competency domains with a high overall acceptance (95.1 %). The learning outcomes of this proposal provide a guide to introduce, support and develop communication curriculae for undergraduate medical studies in the countries involved or in other Spanish- or Portuguese-speaking countries. The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12909-016-0610-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.