Communication skills in standardized patient and peer assessment: A cross-sectional study

Abstract

Introduction: In simulation-based education in healthcare, while standardized patients will provide a summary for constructive verbal or written post-encounter feedback to the doctors or nurses from the patient’s viewpoint, peers are also valuable resources to provide accurate and rapid feedback in the view of other healthcare professionals. Objectives: To compare SPs’ and peers’ feedback in assessing communication skills. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted on trainees (doctors and nurses) and standardized patients who participated in the communication skills training in 2019. A convenience sampling method was applied to collect data using the self-designed questionnaire. Results: 889 pairs of SPs’ and peers’ feedback were included in this study. Peers and standardized patients did not agree on communication skills by scenarios, p >0.05. By subscales, there was also no agreement between peers’ and standardized patients evaluations of trainees’ communication skills. Conclusions: This finding supports the continued use of both training methods to help trainees have diverse perspectives in their self-reflection process as healthcare professionals