Assessors for communication skills: SPs or healthcare professionals?
BACKGROUND
The complexity of modern medicine creates more challenges for teaching and assessment of communication skills in undergraduate medical programme. This research was conducted to study the level of communication skills among undergraduate medical students and to determine the difference between simulated patients and clinical instructors' assessment of communication skills.


METHODS
This comparative study was conducted for three months at the Clinical Skills and Simulation Centre of the International Medical University in Malaysia. The modified Calgary-Cambridge checklist was used to assess the communication skills of 50 first year and 50 second year medical students (five-minutes pre-recorded interview videos on the scenario of sore throat). These videos were reviewed and scored by simulated patients (SPs), communication skills instructors (CSIs) and non-communication skills instructors (non-CSIs).


RESULTS
Better performance was observed among the undergraduate medical students, who had formal training in communication skills with a significant difference in overall scores detected among the first and second year medical students (p = 0.0008). A non-significant difference existed between the scores of SPs and CSIs for Year 1 (p = 0.151).


CONCLUSIONS
The SPs could be trained and involved in assessment of communication skills. Formal training in communication skills is necessary in the undergraduate medical programme.
International Medical University , Malaysia.
Siaw-Cheok
SC
Liew
Susmita
S
Dutta
Jagmohni Kaur
JK
Sidhu
Ranjit
R
De-Alwis
Nicole
N
Chen
Chew-Fei
CF
Sow
Ankur
A
Barua
D000704:Analysis of Variance; D057189:Checklist; D016009:Chi-Square Distribution; D002983:Clinical Competence / Q000592:standards*; D003142:Communication; D004504:Education, Medical, Undergraduate / Q000379:methods / Q000592:standards*; D004521:Educational Measurement / Q000379:methods* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006801:Humans; D008296:Malaysia; D016544:Patient Simulation; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D013337:Students, Medical / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data