• Rachel Yudkowsky, Adnan Alseidi, and José Cintron.
• Department of Medical Education, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60612, USA. rachely@uic.edu
• Curr Surg. 2004 Sep 1; 61 (5): 499-503.

ObjectiveThe Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) has challenged program directors to assess their residents' core competencies, including communication and interpersonal skills (CIS). We report our institution's experience using a series of standardized patient encounters in an objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) to evaluate CIS in surgical residents.MethodsStandardized patients rated the residents' ability to maintain a patient-centered approach across 6 challenging communication tasks. Residents received verbal feedback from the patients after each encounter and completed a survey indicating their experience and comfort with each task. Individual and group reports documented resident competency and provided aggregate information for curriculum review. Formal grades were not assigned.ResultsTwenty-two residents in 2 surgical residency programs piloted the assessment. The Generalizability of the assessment was 0.81. Scores of second- and third-year residents were not significantly different. Residents found the program to be helpful and able to assess their skills.ConclusionsThe standardized patient-based OSCE is an effective method to assess communication and interpersonal skills and provides useful information for curriculum review.

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