Kaohsiung Journal of Medical Sciences
Volume 24, Issue 12 , Pages 651-655, December 2008

The Role of Standardized Patient and Trainer Training in Quality Assurance for a High-Stakes Clinical Skills Examination

  • Gail E. Furman

      Affiliations

    • Corresponding Author InformationAddress correspondence and reprint requests to: Dr Gail E. Furman, Director of Quality Assurance, CSEC, National Board of Medical Examiners, 3750 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA 19147, USA

Clinical Skills Evaluation Collaboration, National Board of Medical Examiners, Philadelphia, USA

Received 5 January 2009; accepted 22 January 2009.

Article Outline

For over 30 years, medical educators have used standardized patients (SPs), laypersons trained to portray a patient case in a realistic manner, to teach and to assess clinical skills. All medical schools in the US have SP programs in place, and the US and Canada require national examinations using SPs to assess the competency of those wishing to obtain licensure to practice medicine in these countries. To ensure a valid and reliable examination, unwanted variance that can be introduced by SP performance must be addressed. The goal of SP training is to imbue the SP with the characteristics, mannerisms and history of a real patient so that the portrayal is consistent and accurate. The challenge is to ensure consistent portrayal of each case with sufficient realism to elicit the expected clinical performance and to ensure standardized SP performance across multiple examinees. This paper considers the quality assurance methods applied to training the SP trainers and the protocols used to train the SPs, to ensure that the SP performances are sufficiently accurate and standardized, and that the evaluators completing the checklists and scales used for scoring do so correctly and consistently.

Key Words:  clinical skills examinations , licensure examination , standardized patients

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References 

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  6. Furman GE, Brown C, Swygert KA, et al. What traits make a good SP? Results of a personality inventory for SPs working in a high stakes examination. In: Proceedings of the 13th Ottawa International Conference on Clinical Competence, Melbourne, Australia, March 8, 2008.

PII: S1607-551X(09)70031-2

doi:10.1016/S1607-551X(09)70031-2

Kaohsiung Journal of Medical Sciences
Volume 24, Issue 12 , Pages 651-655, December 2008

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