Activities and attitudes of standardized patients in the objective structured clinical examination: The second report of a nationwide survey / 医学教育

ABSTRACT

The role of standardized patients (SPs) has developed rapidly over the last10years because of medical education curriculum reform and the introduction of the objective structured clinical examination (OSCE). As the participation of SPs in medical education has increased, the anxieties and frustrations of SPs have also increased. We believe that an understanding of the attitudes of SPs would improve the quality of their activities. The purpose of this survey was to study the activities and psychological needs of Japanese SPs in the OSCE.<BR>1) The response rate to the nationwide survey was62% (332of532SPs).<BR>2) Role-playing and group discussion were the most common training methods, and the length of training varied from 0 to 40 hours.<BR>3) The factors that SPs felt difficult were judging how much to respond in their performances (73%) and maintaining consistent standards in evaluating examinees (66%).<BR>4) Our results suggest that SPs require more training and that the number of SP educators should be increased.