title: Trainees' perceptions of practitioner competence during patient transfer.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Technical and communicative skills are both important features for one's perception of practitioner competence.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  This research examines how trainees' perceptions of practitioner competence change as they view health care practitioners who vary in their technical and communicative skill proficiencies.
  
  
  METHODS
  Occupational therapy students watched standardized encounters of a practitioner performing a patient transfer in combinations of low and high technical and communicative proficiency and then reported their perceptions of practitioner competence.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The reports indicate that technical and communicative skills have independently identifiable impacts on the perceptions of practitioner competency, but technical proficiency has a special impact on the students' perceptions of practitioner communicative competence.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The results are discussed with respect to the way in which students may evaluate their own competence on the basis of either technical or communicative skill. The issue of how this may lead trainees to dedicate their independent learning efforts to an incomplete set of features needed for the development of practitioner competency is raised.
authors.affiliation: Department of Family Medicine, McMaster University Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. griersle@mcmaster.ca
authors.forename: Lawrence
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Grierson
authors.forename: Adam
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Dubrowski
authors.forename: Steph
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: So
authors.forename: Nicole
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Kistner
authors.forename: Heather
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Carnahan
mesh_terms: D003142:Communication; D005260:Female; D006282:Health Personnel / Q000592:standards*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009788:Occupational Therapy / Q000193:education; D009864:Ontario; D010360:Patient Transfer; D011361:Professional Competence / Q000592:standards*; D013336:Students, Health Occupations / Q000523:psychology*; D014741:Video Recording