Table 1.

PICOS, inclusion and exclusion criteria applied to database search

PICOS	Inclusion Criteria	Exclusion Criteria
Population	• Postgraduate doctor or physician or resident, medical officer, registrar, house officer, attending, consultant • Doctor-patient communications • Hospital setting • English Language	• Undergraduate medical students • Veterinary science or Dentistry or Nursing • Allied health specialties such as Pharmacy, Dietetics, Physiotherapy, Podiatry, Occupational Therapy
Intervention	• Training of doctors or physicians or residents to improve physician-patient communications • Assessment of doctors or physicians or residents on physician-patient communication skills • Curriculum on doctor-patient communications, including approaches, content and assessment methods	• Interprofessional communications
Comparison	• Various forms of curriculum initiatives to improve communication skills • Prevailing theories and principles that guide current teaching methods • Assessment methods and domains of communication skills
Outcome	• To incorporate effective communication training in a new communications curriculum, or to improve existing programs for postgraduate medical training
Study design	• Articles published from 1st January 2000 to 31st December 2020 • Published in English Language • Databases: PsycINFO, EMBASE, PubMed, ERIC, CINAHL, Scopus and Google Scholar • Mixed-methods research, meta-analyses, systematic reviews, randomised controlled trials, cohort studies, case-control studies, cross-sectional studies and descriptive papers • Grey Literature, electronic and print information not by commercial publishing • Case reports and series, ideas, editorials, perspectives, and conference abstracts