Agreement between simulated patients and faculty: Assessment of communication skills during objective structured clinical examination

Objective: Ensuring competence in communication skills amongst trainees is essential in health professions education. Involving faculty members for the same is a challenge in Obstetrics and Gynecology (OBGYN) due to their clinical commitments. The present study compares scores of OBGYN faculty, non-OBGYN faculty and simulated patients (SPs) on communication skills of postgraduate trainees during formative Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE). Methods: This is a psychometric study conducted in Feburary 2017 at the Aga Khan University Medical College (AKU-MC). All thirty-two postgraduate trainees of OBGYN gave consent. Each trainee was assessed by OBGYN faculty, non-OBGYN faculty and SP on communication skills at six stations using nine-point itemized rating-scale during formative OBGYN OSCE. The scores were reviewed using descriptive statistics, reliability was calculated using Cronbach’s alpha and inter-rater reliability was analyzed using Pearson correlation and intra-class correlation coefficient. Results: The score reliability of each of the examiners was >0.7. The mean scores showed that OBGYN faculty were most stringent while SPs were lenient examiners, however, non-OBGYN faculty scored in between. The inter-rater reliability among any two of the OBGYN, non-OBGYN and SP examiner was >0.84 using Pearson correlation and >0.9 using intra-class correlation. Conclusion: The SPs and non-OBGYN clinical faculty can also be used to assess communication and counseling skills on OBGYN OSCEs after required training as examiners.