title: The Effect of Previous Resident Interactions on the Assessment of Interpersonal and Communication Skills by Teaching Faculty: Are We the Best Evaluators?
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Evaluating resident interpersonal and communication skills (ICS) presents a significant challenge. Unlike the In-Training-Exam, an objective measure of knowledge, the evaluation of ICS is subjective. Previous interactions could influence how teaching faculty evaluate this competency leading to inaccurate assessment of resident ICS. Faculty groups from other residencies and non-physicians were enlisted to compare assessments with those by teaching faculty.
  
  
  METHODS
  A cross-sectional study was conducted comparing how different evaluator groups assessed the ICS of anesthesiology residents. Nine residents participated each in two Standardized Patient (SP) encounters that were video-recorded. The recordings were viewed by eleven evaluators representing four different evaluator groups, one non-blinded teaching faculty group, two blinded anesthesiology faculty groups from separate programs and one blinded non-physician group. They scored each encounter using a modified SEGUE framework evaluation form graded on a Likert scale.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The mean score for each resident ICS encounter by evaluator group were as follows: non-blinded teaching faculty (57.89), non-physician group (57.42), and the blinded anesthesiology faculties (53.00) and (53.83) respectively. There was significant difference in how the evaluator groups scored the resident performances (p<0.001). Analysis of ranks showed excellent correlation comparing teaching faculty with the other anesthesiology faculty groups (r=0.764, p=0.017 and r=0.765, p=0.016, respectively). The highest ranked resident overall ranked high across all evaluator groups and the lowest ranked resident was ranked lowest across most evaluator groups.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Though potential for biases from previous interactions exist, teaching faculty assessments of resident ICS are similar to the assessments of other anesthesiology faculty evaluator groups.
authors.affiliation: Associate Professor of Anesthesiology, University of Toledo College of Medicine.
authors.forename: Andrew B
authors.initials: AB
authors.lastname: Casabianca
authors.affiliation: Associate Professor of Anesthesiology, George Washington University School of Medicine.
authors.forename: Jeffrey S
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Berger
authors.affiliation: Professor of Anesthesiology, Ohio State University College of Medicine.
authors.forename: Thomas J
authors.initials: TJ
authors.lastname: Papadimos
authors.affiliation: Assistant Professor of Communication, University of Toledo.
authors.forename: Amy
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Capwell-Burns
keywords: Communication skills; assessment of interpersonal; best evaluators; resident interactions