title: Standardized patients in the assessment of general practice consulting skills (694).
abstract: This paper describes the use of standardized patient interviews as a means of assessing the consulting skills of fifth year medical students studying general practice. Interviews are restricted to a duration of 9 minutes and focus on either diagnostic or management tasks. Volunteers are trained to play standardized roles depicting common general practice presentations. A detailed marksheet has been developed to increase inter-examiner reliability, discourage global marking and incorporate a patient assessment of the student. Issues of reliability, validity and security in this form of assessment are discussed.
authors.affiliation: Centre for General Practice, University of Queensland, Australia.
authors.forename: M J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Yelland
mesh_terms: D001315:Australia; D002983:Clinical Competence; D004521:Educational Measurement; D005194:Family Practice / Q000193:education*; D006801:Humans; D016544:Patient Simulation