Recently, standardized patient assessments and objective structured clinical examinations have been used for high-stakes certification and licensure decisions. In these testing situations, it is important that the assessments are standardized, the scores are accurate and reliable, and the resulting decisions regarding competence ar equitable and defensible. For the decisions to be valid, justif...

In this study we discuss our experience of including an ethics objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) station in endocrinology board exam. One OSCE station on truth telling was developed and a standardized patient was trained for role playing in this station. Based on a pilot study, the evaluation checklist got modified. Then the finalized station added into the OSCE phase of endocrin...

PROBLEM Constraints on time and resources prevented first- and second-year medical students from having sufficient time to complete required tasks in standardized patient (SP) communication skills training sessions, and to appreciate the SP character as a "person." Case believability was limited by having each individual SP portray multiple patients in different encounters. APPROACH In 2010, ...

The use of physiologic monitoring (e.g., cardiac monitoring) as an important component in providing safe patient care has escalated over the past two decades. It enables the clinician to detect physiologic changes in the patient's condition before they become clinically significant, thus allowing anticipation and prevention of adverse events. Issues and concerns regarding physiologic monitoring...

OBJECTIVE To determine whether the addition of discharge standard illustrated cards improves understanding of patients in the emergency room. METHODS We conducted a prospective, randomized, interventional study with 228 patients discharged from the emergency department. All patients were interviewed and tested for the level of understanding of discharge instructions. Some of them received the...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES A comprehensive training program to develop tobacco-specific standardized patient instructors (SPIs) was implemented and evaluated at Wake Forest University. METHODS Descriptive statistics were used to assess SPIs' experience with the training program and medical students' perceptions of the SPI-student interaction. Two standardized scales, used to assess student per...

PURPOSE Standardized patient (SP) methodology is the gold standard for evaluating clinical practice. This approach was used to investigate the content of typical optometric eyecare in England and the reproducibility of refractive error measurement using prescriptions obtained by three SPs. METHODS The three SPs were independently examined by three to four expert optometric clinicians to obtai...