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Biomedical subjects

Karen Szauter

Publications and source records attributed to Karen Szauter.

6 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2002

Medical students' perspectives on and responses to abuse during the internal medicine clerkship.

BACKGROUND: The abuse of medical students on clinical rotations is a recognized problem, but the effects on students and their responses warrant further study. PURPOSE: To determine the severity of student abuse and the effects of abuse on students during the internal medicine clerkship. METHODS: Internal medicine clerks at 11 medical schools (N = 1,072) completed an exit survey. Students were asked whether they had been abused. If they had, they were asked about the severity of the abuse, whether they reported it, and its effects on them. RESULTS: Of the responding students, 123 (11%) believed they had been abused. Only 31% of the students who felt abused reported the episodes to someone. The most common consequences of the events included poor learning environments, lack of confidence, and feelings of depression, anger, and humiliation. CONCLUSION: Students described a variety of personal and educational effects of abuse. They generally did not report abuse because of fear of retaliation and the belief that reporting is pointless.

Adult↗
PubMed2002

Internal medicine clerkship directors' use of and opinions about clerkship examinations.

BACKGROUND: For years, quantifiable examinations have been a core component of assessing medical student competence during the internal medicine clerkship. PURPOSE: To determine how internal medicine clerkship directors use and view examinations and how uses of examinations have changed. METHODS: In 1999, the Clerkship Directors in Internal Medicine conducted a confidential survey of its 123 institutional members. RESULTS: Survey response rate was 89% (109/123). The National Board of Medical Examiners subject examination was used by 83%, alone (49%) or in combination with a faculty developed examination or a standardized patient examination (34%). Minimum passing scores were required for the subject exam by 80%, for faculty-developed examinations by 65%, and for the standardized patient exam by 63%. Examinations contribute approximately 25% toward a student's final grade. Students with acceptable clerkship performances but who fail an exam typically retest after self-study. Students who fail a retest receive unsatisfactory grades and require additional medicine experience. Of the clerkship directors who reported using the National Board of Medical Examiners subject examination, 45 (50%) provided comments on ways to improve the examination. Comments focused on examination content, reporting results, basing the exam on a published core curriculum, and general administrative issues. Over the past decade, use of the National Board of Medical Examiners subject examination has increased (66% to 83%), use of faculty-developed examinations has declined (46% to 27%), and the use of a clerkship standardized patient examination increased sharply (2% to 27%). CONCLUSIONS: Internal medicine clerkship directors commonly require students to pass standardized or locally developed exams and use test results to make academic decisions. The use of standardized patient examinations has increased significantly and likely reflects a broadening of competency assessment. Our results can serve as a basis for individual programmatic evaluation, for internal medicine and other clerkship directors.

Adult↗
PubMed2000

Global Ratings of Student Performance in a Standardized Patient Examination: Is the Whole More than the Sum of the Parts?

Standardized patient examinations (SPE) are widely used in medical education to assess skills that cannot be measured with written examinations. Trained actors termed standardized patients (SPs) are used to simulate patients with specific medical problems. SPs typically use behaviorally specific checklists and rating scales to evaluate examinees. This study explored the use of faculty and SP global ratings of students' clinical and interpersonal skills in an SPE. The reliability of global ratings was found to on par with more specific behaviorally anchored ratings. Global ratings were also found to be predictive of written tests of clinical knowledge and ratings of actual clinical performance after controlling for behaviorally anchored ratings. Faculty global ratings were more reliable and more predictive of other performance than SP global ratings. These results suggest global ratings by faculty observers and possibly SPs can provide unique and useful information in these performance-based examinations.

Journal Article↗