Comparing Attending and Patient Evaluation of Medical Student Communication Skills on an Emergency Medicine Clerkship
Abstract
Learning Objective: To determine how attending and patient assessment of medical student communication skills correlate.
Background: Accurately assessing medical student (MS) patient communication skills is an essential component of undergraduate medical education. There are different methods used to evaluate MSs, including supervising attending physician ratings as well as patient assessment. However, it is unclear how these distinct types of evaluators compare with each other.
Objectives: To determine how attending and patient assessment of MS communication skills correlate. We hypothesized the two would closely correlate.
Methods: This was a retrospective study of rotating fourth-year MSs on an elective EM clerkship. From 7/16–10/17, ED attending physicians and patients assessed MS communication skills during the students’ ED shifts. Attendings rated MS communication skills with patients using a 1-5 Likert scale. Patients evaluated MSs using the modified Communication Assessment Tool (CAT), a 14-item questionnaire based on a 1-5 Likert scale. Mean attending ratings and patient CAT scores were calculated for each MS. Due to nonparametric distribution, means were divided into tertiles and scores weighted to assign adjacent tertiles partial agreement. Agreement between attending and CAT scores was measured using a Cohen’s kappa.
Results: 25 MSs were included. A total of 217 supervising attending evaluations with a median of 9 evaluations per MS (interquartile range (IQR) 8-10, min 6) and 102 CAT questionnaires with a median of 4 evaluations per MS (IQR 3-5, min 3) were completed. Attending and CAT scores showed slight agreement (k 0.196).
Conclusions: Attending and patient ratings of MS communication skills show only slight agreement. It is possible that utilizing only one type of evaluator during a clerkship may miss important communication issues that could be addressed with the MS. Utilizing a multimodal approach that includes both attending and patient evaluations may be beneficial in fully assessing and subsequently educating MSs on their patient communication skills.