The assessment of communication skills during OSCEs: development and trialled implementation of a new standardised model using the MAAS-Global Instrument
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Date
2016-01-19Author
Setyonugroho, Winny
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Abstract
Communication skills (CS) are important skills that have a major impact in
healthcare outcomes. These outcomes include, for instance, increased patient
understanding, patient satisfaction and better pain control. With forty years of
professional experience, a general practitioner will usually have conducted
between 120 to 160 thousand clinical consultations. In fact, most of the decisions
made to sue physicians arise from communication problems rather that from the
original illness.
As in medical education settings, CS training invariably has a positive impact on
student performance. An Objectives Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) is a
common measurement tool used to assess student CS. Concerning the OSCE, it
has been reported that there has yet been no agreement reached amongst
medical educators on the standard instrument to be used. the OSCE instrument
serves as the station checklist. In order to draw meaningful interpretations of the
assessment results, an instrument needs to be valid and reliable. Additionally,
assessing CS is more difficult than assessing clinical skills. Furthermore, the lack
of any standards in measuring CS precludes comparison of outcomes across
assessment settings. In order to be able to compare, a standardised
measurement is required.