New Delhi, April 14 -- The Union health ministry's National Institute of Health and Family Welfare (NIHFW) is planning to start a dedicated course to train doctors at government hospitals in soft-skills that will help them communicate more effectively with patients and attendants and minimise the rising incidents of patient-doctor confrontation, people familiar with the matter said.

"It is going to be well-designed training course with several components to it - training doctors on how to communicate well with their patients and those accompanying them is going to a part of the course. It will also have other components that would include training doctors in how to document better in medico-legal cases so that it holds up in the court of...