Assessing medical students' skills in working with interpreters during patient encounters: a validation study of the Interpreter Scale.
OBJECTIVE
Interpreted patient encounters require distinct communication skills. The absence of available reliable, valid, and practical measures hinders the assessment of these skills; therefore, the authors aimed to construct and validate the Interpreter Scale (IS).


METHODS
The authors constructed the IS based on expert consensus and prior studies. They administered the IS to two classes (n = 182) in an interpreted standardized patient (SP) case setting. Standardized interpreters in the examination room assessed, using the IS, students' communication skills. Concurrently, SPs, using the validated Patient-Physician Interaction scale (PPI) and the Interpreter Impact Rating Scale (IIRS), also assessed students' skills. Trained observers watched DVDs and used the Faculty Observer Rating Scale (FORS) to assess student performance. A prior study documented the qualities of the IIRS and FORS. The authors determined the internal consistency reliability and examined construct validity of IS scores through factor analysis and concordance with other measures' scores.


RESULTS
IS reliability analysis yielded Cronbach alpha = 0.77. Factor analysis demonstrated two IS dimensions. Nine items, "managing the encounter," and four items, "setting the stage," explained 76% and 15% of score variance, respectively. IS and FORS scores significantly correlated (r = 0.385; P < .0001). IS factor 1 scores significantly correlated (all P < .0001) with FORS (r = 0.402), IIRS (r = 0.277), and PPI (r = 0.332) scores.


CONCLUSIONS
The IS has reasonable internal consistency reliability and construct validity to warrant use for formatively measuring student communication skills in interpreted SP encounters, and it needs testing in actual patient encounters.
Lie
Désirée
D
Research/Faculty Development, Department of Family Medicine, University of California, Irvine, School of Medicine, Irvine, California 92868, USA. dalie@uci.edu
Bereknyei
Sylvia
S
Braddock
Clarence H
CH
Encinas
Jennifer
J
Ahearn
Susan
S
Boker
John R
JR
D000328:Adult; D003144:Communication Barriers; D054521:Cultural Competency; D004504:Education, Medical, Undergraduate; D004521:Educational Measurement / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007400:Interprofessional Relations; D008297:Male; D019303:Multilingualism; D016544:Patient Simulation; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D055815:Young Adult