title: Resident characteristics to evaluate during recruitment and interview: a Delphi study.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The recruitment and interview process for medical residency programmes is a time- and resource-intensive effort. There is very little research to guide programmes when evaluating residency candidates. This study represents one step in identifying candidate characteristics to assess during the recruitment and interview process.
  
  
  METHODS
  Sixteen expert interviewers from 14 family medicine residency programmes in North Carolina participated in a three-round Delphi study to build consensus around a ranked list of successful resident candidate characteristics. An interrater reliability analysis produced average pair-wise agreement and Krippendorff's Alpha coefficients.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Clinical skills, medical knowledge, interpersonal and communication skills, critical thinking, and professional and ethical behaviour were the highest ranked characteristics. Average pair-wise agreement for rounds two and three were 6.30 and 11.04%, respectively.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Residency programmes may benefit from using an empirically studied list of characteristics to evaluate candidate applications and interviews. Future research should include national surveys of expert interviewers from a variety of residency programmes and a longitudinal study to correlate interview evaluations using the ranked list with measures of residency success.
authors.affiliation: a Duke/Southern Regional Area Health Education Centre (AHEC) Family Medicine Residency Programme , Fayetteville , NC , USA.
authors.forename: Matthew
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Martin
authors.affiliation: a Duke/Southern Regional Area Health Education Centre (AHEC) Family Medicine Residency Programme , Fayetteville , NC , USA.
authors.forename: Lenard
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Salzberg
mesh_terms: D002983:Clinical Competence; D003142:Communication; D003697:Delphi Technique; D005194:Family Practice / Q000193:education*; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D007396:Internship and Residency / Q000592:standards*; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D009657:North Carolina; D010560:Personnel Selection / Q000592:standards*; D000068616:Professionalism; D012570:School Admission Criteria; D013997:Time Factors
keywords: Recruitment of residents; family medicine