Is an additional assessment of candidates by standardized patients useful in the OSCE?

Lörwald, Andrea Carolin; Lahner, Felicitas-Maria; Stricker, Daniel; Huwendiek, Sören (12 September 2019). Is an additional assessment of candidates by standardized patients useful in the OSCE? In: 6th Swiss Conference on Standardized Patients and Simulation in Healthcare (SPSIM) (p. 27). Bern: BFH

Background
Good physician communication skills seem to increase patient satisfaction and improve healing processes. Although there are indications that physici-ans and patients value communicative competencies differently, candidates in OSCE are often evaluated by physicians only.

Research Question
In this study, we examine whether additional assess-ment of candidates by standardized patients (SPs) is useful.

Methods
In the OSCE of the 5th year of study 2017 in Bern, the students were additionally assessed by the SPs on the basis of two items. The SPs were informed in advance that their assessment will be obtained for academic research only and will have no impact on the official assessment of the students. One item addressed the communicative competencies of the students: „Global communication rating“ on the scale „Extremely competent; Very competent; Competent; borderline; Not competent“. The other item addressed the SPs‘ loyalty to the candidates: „I would like to come back and discuss my concerns with this student.“ on the scale „Fully agree; Agree; I rather agree; Neutral; I don’t agree“. In addition, the SPs had the opportunity to comment on their rating in a free-text field.

Results
In fact, the SPs rate the communicative competen-cies of the candidates differently than the medical examiners. Had 30% of the candidates‘ assessment of the candidates by the SPs been included, three times more candidates failed in the section „Anamnesis Status Management“ (10 versus 3, respectively 4.2% versus 1.3%). In addition, the consideration of the SP judgment reduced the construct irrelevant variance by one fifth (in the „Anamnesis Status Management „ section from 21.4 % to 17.3 % and in the area „Com-municative Competencies“ from 39.0 % to 31.0 %). This means that the measurement error is reduced and the ratings better match the actual performance of the candidates.The two assessments by the SPs (communication and loyalty) are closely linked (r = 0.739). The SPs mentio-ned among other things the interpersonal relation-ship with the candidates, the flow of information and the professionalism of the candidates as important aspects for their evaluation.

Discussion and Conclusion
The results of our study argue for an additional assessment of the candidates by the SPs. However, before such an assessment is actually included in the official assessment of the candidates, we believe that it should be further explored in what the assessments by the SPs and by the medical examiners differ and who can better assess which aspects.

Interest & Impact

Downloads

0 since deposited on 02 Oct 2019
0 in the past 12 months

Citations

5 Citations in Web of Science ®
6 Citations in Scopus

Search

in Google Scholar™

Services

Actions (login required)

Edit item

Actions (login required)

Edit item