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While important to the delivery of high-quality medical care, soft skills are often underemphasized during healthcare training in low-and-middle-income countries. Despite South Asia\u2019s large population, the efficacy and viability of a digital soft skills curriculum for South Asian healthcare practitioners has not been studied to date. We hypothesized that a web-based, multilingual, soft skills course could aid the understanding and application of soft skills to improve healthcare practitioner knowledge, confidence, attitudes, and intent-to-change clinical practice.In September 2019 a needs assessment observing soft skills practices was conducted in several Indian states. We developed a communication-focused soft skills curriculum that comprised seven 10-minute video lectures, recorded in spoken English and Hindi. Participants consisted of any practicing healthcare professionals and trainees in select South Asian countries age 18 and over. Participant knowledge, confidence, attitudes, and intent-to-change clinical practice were evaluated using pre- and post-course tests and surveys. Statistical analyses were performed using STATA and SPSS.From July 26, 2021 to September 26, 2021, 5750 registered and attempted the course, 2628 unique participants completed the pre-test, and 1566 unique participants completed the post-test. Participants demonstrated small but statistically significant gains in confidence (\ud835\udc5d&lt;0.001), attitudes toward course topics relevance (\ud835\udc5d&lt;0.001), and intent-to-change clinical practice (\ud835\udc5d&lt;0.001). There was no statistically significant gain in knowledge. A digital soft-skills massive open online course for healthcare practitioners in South Asia could serve as a viable approach to improve the quality of soft skills training in low-to-middle income countries.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1007\/s10916-024-02051-5","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2024,3,20]],"date-time":"2024-03-20T22:01:28Z","timestamp":1710972088000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/springer_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":3,"title":["Assessing the Efficacy of a Novel Massive Open Online Soft Skills Course for South Asian Healthcare Professionals"],"prefix":"10.1007","volume":"48","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-2834-5487","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Aditya","family":"Mahadevan","sequence":"first","affiliation":[]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-2221-9877","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Ronald","family":"Rivera","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-4027-1203","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Mahan","family":"Najhawan","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-2744-7983","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Soheil","family":"Saadat","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-0049-9716","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Matthew","family":"Strehlow","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-0197-0231","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"G. V. Ramana","family":"Rao","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-1267-9175","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Julie","family":"Youm","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]}],"member":"297","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2024,3,21]]},"reference":[{"key":"2051_CR1","unstructured":"Kalauz MS, Hudec G, Kirinic V. Soft skills perception among students: importance and performance. In: Hunjak T, Kirinic V, Konecki M, editors. Central European Conference on Information and Intelligent Systems, 2015 [Internet]. Varazdin: Fac Organization and Informatics, Univ Zagreb; 2015 [cited 2022 Dec 31]. p. 89\u201395. Available from: https:\/\/www.webofscience.com\/wos\/woscc\/full-record\/WOS:000595000400012"},{"key":"2051_CR2","unstructured":"Alberto Conejero J, Luis Poza J, Seoane-Sepulveda JB. Teaching Me Softly: A Syllabus for a Subject on Soft Skills. In: Chova LG, Martinez AL, Torres IC, editors. 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