PubMed Health⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

Brian E Mavis

Publications and source records attributed to Brian E Mavis.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

Medical students as standardized patients to assess interviewing skills for pain evaluation.

PURPOSE: The use of medical students as standardized patients in a performance assessment of pain evaluation was studied. METHODS: Fifty-two pairs of second-year medical students participated. One student portrayed a patient presenting with cancer pain and was interviewed by the other medical student. The student-patient then rated the interview using a checklist of pain assessment and general interviewing skills. The interviews were audiotaped and also rated independently. RESULTS: Based on student-patient ratings, 36 (69%) students demonstrated 9 or more of the 11 pain-specific checklist items, compared to 34 (65%) students according to the trained rater. Highly specific pain-related items had higher agreement than broader interviewing skill items. There would be differences in the summary assessments of students depending on which rating data were used. DISCUSSION: Medical students represent a readily accessible resource as patients for clinical simulations. Students tended to overestimate the performance of fellow students, but acting as a standardized patient had educational value, and can be used to extend simulated patient encounters within the curriculum. Further investigation is needed to improve the reliability of the feedback provided by student-patients.

Clinical Competence↗

A strategy for developing educational evaluations for learner, course, and institutional goals.

The curricula for both veterinary and human medicine are undergoing review and change as a new and highly competitive practice environment influences what abilities graduates require to be successful. Concerning many is the contention that some graduates lack skills and aptitudes necessary for economic success. If significant changes are to be considered for the curricula of either profession, it will be difficult to plan for meaningful change in the absence of high-quality information about the needs of graduates and related curriculum gaps. The purpose of this article is to argue why educators should design more effective systems of evaluation that are responsive to the needs of educational program planning. One example from a medical school is described. In this case, the authors discuss how their institution's evaluations were insufficient for answering new and important questions that go beyond traditional cognitive measures: specifically, no data set was available that allowed the institution to answer questions about practice environment and curricular innovations. More recently, institutions have become interested in learning to what extent their broad missions are accomplished or not. Similarly, academic leaders are not simply interested in performance of learners on tests of competence; they want to know more about how their graduates are doing in the practice setting. To answer questions such as these, educators must expand their systems of evaluations to address these broader themes. The authors conclude by identifying several lessons learned from their experiences in developing a new system of educational program evaluation.

Animals↗