In the September 3, 2003 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, Michael J. Yedidia, et al published an article titled "Effect of communications training on medical student performance."

"Although physicians' communication skills have been found to be related to clinical outcomes and patient satisfaction, teaching of communication skills has not been fully integrated into many medical school curricula or adequately evaluated with large-scale controlled trials."

Although software developers' communication skills have been found to be related to software quality (Sawyer and Guinan, 1998) and user satisfaction (Hornik, S., et al, 2003), teaching of communication skills has not been fully integrated into many software school curricula (Jackson, M., Diwan, A., & Waite, W., 2002; Lynch, K., 2004; Tucker, J., Mackness, A., & Rutledge, H., 2004) or adequately evaluated with large-scale controlled trials.

Incidentally, the group of medical students receiving the communication curricula scored significantly higher than students without the communication training on objective structured clinical exams (OSCEs) with higher scores in, among other things, patient assessment (6.7% difference, p < .001.) Communication coursework made the medical students better at finding bugs.