National survey of clinical communication assessment in medical education in the United Kingdom (UK)

Anita Laidlaw, Helen Salisbury, Eva M Doherty, Connie Wiskin

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

22 Citations (Scopus)
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Abstract

Background
All medical schools in the UK are required to be able to provide evidence of competence in clinical communication in their graduates. This is usually provided by summative assessment of clinical communication, but there is considerable variation in how this is carried out. This study aimed to gain insight into the current assessment of clinical communication in UK medical schools.
Methods
The survey was sent via e-mail to communication leads who then were asked to consult with all staff within their medical school involved in the assessment of communication.
Results
Results were obtained from 27 out of 33 schools (response rate 82%) and a total of 34 courses. The average number of assessments per year was 2.4 (minimum 0, maximum 10). The Objective Structured Clinical Exam (OSCE) was the most commonly used method of assessment (53%). Other assessments included MCQ and workplace based assessments. Only nine courses used a single method of assessment. Issues raised included, logistics and costs of assessing mainly by OSCE, the robustness and reliability of such exams and integration with other clinical skills.
Conclusions
It is encouraging that a variety of assessment methods are being used within UK medical schools and that these methods target different components of clinical communication skills acquisition.
Original languageEnglish
JournalBMC Medical Education
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 13 Jan 2014

Data Availability Statement

This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Keywords

  • clinical communication
  • assessment
  • survey

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