Dataset Information

Feasibility and validation of real-time patient evaluations of internal medicine interns' communication and professionalism skills.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:Residents receive little information about how they interact with patients. OBJECTIVE:This pilot study assessed the feasibility and validity of a new 16-item tool developed to assess patients' perspectives of interns' communication skills and professionalism and the team's communication. METHODS:Feasibility was determined by the percentage of surveys completed, the average time for survey completion, the percentage of target interns evaluated, and the mean number of evaluations per intern. Generalizability was analyzed using an (evaluator:evaluatee) × item model. Simulated D studies estimated optimal numbers of items and evaluators. Factor analysis with varimax rotation was used to examine the structure of the items. Scores were correlated with other measures of communication and professionalism for validation. RESULTS:Most patients (225 of 305 [74%]) completed the evaluation. Each survey took approximately 6.3 minutes to complete. In 43 days over 18 weeks, 45 of 50 interns (90%) were evaluated an average of 4.6 times. Fifty evaluations would be required to reach a minimally acceptable coefficient (0.57). Two factor structures were identified. The evaluation did not correlate with faculty evaluations of resident communication but did correlate weakly (r = 0.140, P = .04) with standardized patient evaluations. CONCLUSIONS:A large number of patient evaluations are needed to reliably assess intern and team communication skills. Evaluations by patients add a perspective in assessing these skills that is different from those of faculty evaluations. Future work will focus on whether this new information adds to existing evaluation systems and warrants the added effort.

SUBMITTER: Dine CJ

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3963799 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Similar Datasets

Project description:BackgroundProfessionalism and communication skills constitute important components of the integral formation of physicians which has repercussion on the quality of health care and medical education. The objective of this study was to assess medical graduates' professionalism and communication skills from the patients' perspective and to examine its association with patients' socio-demographic variables.MethodsThis is a hospital based cross-sectional study. It involved 315 patients and 105 medical graduates selected by convenient sampling method. A modified and validated version of the American Board of Internal Medicine's (ABIM) Patient Assessment survey questionnaire was used for data collection through a face to face interview. Data processing and analysis were performed using the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) 16.0. Mean, frequency distribution, and percentage of the variables were calculated. A non-parametric Kruskal Wallis test was applied to verify whether the patients' assessment was influenced by variables such as age, gender, education, at a level of significance, p ≤ 0.05.ResultsFemale patients constituted 46% of the sample, whereas males constituted 54%. The mean age was 36 ± 16. Patients' scoring of the graduate's skills ranged from 3.29 to 3.83 with a mean of 3.64 on a five-point Likert scale. Items assessing the "patient involvement in decision-making" were assigned the minimum mean values, while items dealing with "establishing adequate communication with patient" assigned the maximum mean values. Patients, who were older than 45 years, gave higher scores than younger ones (p < 0.001). Patients with higher education reported much lower scores than those with lower education (p = 0.003). Patients' gender did not show any statistically significant influence on the rating level.ConclusionGenerally patients rated the medical graduates' professionalism and communication skills at a good level. Patients' age and educational level were significantly associated with the rating level.

Dataset Information

Feasibility and validation of real-time patient evaluations of internal medicine interns' communication and professionalism skills.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets