Sexual history inquiry and HIV counseling: improving clinical skills and medical knowledge through an interactive workshop utilizing standardized patients.
BACKGROUND
Sexual history and HIV counseling (SHHIVC) are essential clinical skills. Our project's purpose was to evaluate a standardized patient educational intervention teaching third-year medical students SHHIVC.


METHODS
A four-hour standardized patient workshop was delivered to one-half of the class each of three consecutive years at one medical school. Approximately 3.5 weeks later, all students engaged in a standardized patient examination including one station assessing SHHIVC, answered an open-ended written exercise following the standardized patient encounter, and completed a written examination including sexual history and HIV-related questions.


RESULTS
Workshop participants scored higher than non-participants on SHHIVC items on the standardized patient station (P < .0001), written exam (P < .0001), and open-ended written exercise after the standardized patient encounter (P = .024).


CONCLUSIONS
Our SHHIVC curriculum was associated with students demonstrating better clinical skills on a SHHIVC standardized patient examination station and more SHHIVC knowledge on two measures of medical knowledge than students not participating in the SHHIVC educational intervention.
Haist
Steven A
SA
Department of Internal Medicine, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40536, USA. sahaist@email.uky.edu
Lineberry
Michelle J
MJ
Griffith
Charles H
CH
Hoellein
Andrew R
AR
Talente
Gregg M
GM
Wilson
John F
JF
D002983:Clinical Competence; D003376:Counseling; D004504:Education, Medical, Undergraduate / Q000379:methods*; D004521:Educational Measurement; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000517:prevention & control*; D006801:Humans; D008487:Medical History Taking; D016544:Patient Simulation; D015229:Sexually Transmitted Diseases, Viral / Q000517:prevention & control*