ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE: To propose a comprehensive set of competencies and educational objectives for communication and social competencies in undergraduate medical education and to support the nationwide implementation of these issues in all medical schools. METHODS: Thirty experts from different medical and psychosocial disciplines participated in a 2-day workshop using the Nominal Group Technique (NGT) to develop an initial set of educational objectives. These were refined, structured, and rated according to their importance by means of a two-step Delphi Survey involving additional experts in medical education. RESULTS: The initial workshop resulted in 188 educational objectives assigned to 26 different topics. After the Delphi Survey, 131 objectives remained, assigned to 19 different topics. Some objectives that could be assigned to more than one topic were subsumed under a new more general category. CONCLUSION: The described consensus process proved successful as one method to develop a set of educational objectives. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: The Basel consensus statement can be used to orientate curriculum reform and development in medical education.
Subject(s)
Clinical Competence/standards , Communication , Competency-Based Education/organization & administration , Consensus Development Conferences as Topic , Delphi Technique , Education, Medical, Undergraduate/standards , Austria , Curriculum , Education, Medical, Undergraduate/methods , Germany , Humans , Pilot Projects , Program Development , Schools, Medical , SwitzerlandABSTRACT
Communication skills training is an accepted part of undergraduate medical programs nowadays. In addition to learning experiences its importance should be emphasised by performance-based assessment. As detailed checklists have been shown to be not well suited for the assessment of communication skills for different reasons, this study aimed to validate a global rating scale. A Canadian instrument was translated to German and adapted to assess students' communication skills during an end-of-semester-OSCE. Subjects were second and third year medical students at the reformed track of the Charité-Universitaetsmedizin Berlin. Different groups of raters were trained to assess students' communication skills using the global rating scale. Validity testing included concurrent validity and construct validity: Judgements of different groups of raters were compared to expert ratings as a defined gold standard. Furthermore, the amount of agreement between scores obtained with this global rating scale and a different instrument for assessing communication skills was determined. Results show that communication skills can be validly assessed by trained non-expert raters as well as standardised patients using this instrument.
