Lead Author: HyeRin Roh
Submitted by: Kerensa Peterson

There are many evaluation tools that SPs have used to rate medical students’ communication skills.  At times SP ratings differ from the ratings of medical faculty because SPs experience an interaction differently than an observing faculty member.  This study used the frequency of students’ communication behaviors as an objective measure.

The researchers compared two groups, one of high-scoring students and the other low-scoring, in the number of utterances during the SP encounter.  They showed that higher scoring students had smoother conversations with a higher number of utterances.  It was also noted that nonverbal behaviors make quite a difference in the communication taking place between SP and student.  The researchers called for further analysis of those nonverbal behaviors.

Read the full article in the Korean Journal of Medical Education through the US National Library of Medicine here.

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