Catering to the Patient

Introduction: It has been shown that communication skills acquired during
undergraduate medical education are of great importance. Hence, many
countries require teaching communication as part of their medical
curricula. To assess students’ learning progress, “Catering to the
Patient”, as an aspect of showing empathy, should be evaluated. Since
there was no description of a validated instrument fitting for this
purpose, one had to be developed. To describe its process of development
and its psychometric properties were the aims of this study. Methods:
Based on the Calgary-Cambridge Observation Guide (CCOG), items describing
catering to the patient were selected and modified. Cognitive pretest
interviews were conducted to check understandability. Therefore, 7 raters
assessed 1 video (R=7, V=1). In the following pilot study (R=3, V=10)
first psychometric properties were evaluated and necessary corrections in
the preliminary evaluation form were carried out before the final
evaluation form was used to assess students’ ability to cater to the
patient and psychometric properties were described in detail (R=2, V=35).
Results: The final assessment instrument, “Catering to the Patient”,
contains 11 checklist items and two global ratings (items 12 and 13). In
the final evaluation, the inter-rater reliability (IRR) ranged from 0 to
0.562, the median was r=0.305. Concerning item 13 (a global rating), 88.6%
of the videos were scored with the maximum difference of one point. The
internal consistency was very high (Cronbach’s α: α=0.937 and α=0.962),
and the correlation between the checklist items and the global rating was
high (Pearson’s r: r=0.856 and r=0.898). Discussion: The assessment
instrument “Catering to the Patient” is suitable for giving feedback and
for using it in formative examinations. Its use for summative examinations
can be considered. Further examinations should evaluate if a three-point
Likert scale could reach higher values and if item 13 can be used as a
stand-alone item.