Standardized patients in the early acquisition of clinical skills.

OBJECTIVES

Facing dramatic reductions of inpatient beds and fewer faculty tutors, the Queen's University medical school has had to consider alternatives to the traditional inpatient encounter for the early acquisition of clinical skills. The purpose of this study was to investigate the feasibility and impact on students of a model for a first-year clinical skills course, using exclusively standardized patients in place of inpatients, and using a smaller ratio of faculty to students.

DESIGN

Twenty volunteers were selected from the first-year class of 75 students to participate as the experimental group. The remaining 55 students formed the control group.

SETTING

Queen's University medical school, Ontario, Canada.

SUBJECTS

First-year medical students.

RESULTS

In measures of student satisfaction with the amount of performance feedback received during the course, there was a non-significant trend towards greater satisfaction among the experimental group compared to the control group. This occurred despite a tutor to student ratio of 1.5:10 in the experimental group compared to 3:10 in the control group. In the student evaluation of their tutors, mean scores for the two groups were 4.28 for the experimental group and 4. 06 for the control group (P = 0.10). The mean OSCE scores for the two groups were 76.4 for the experimental group and 76.5 for the control group (P = 0.93). There is no practical or statistical difference in either of these two scores.

CONCLUSIONS

We conclude that this new model is feasible, was well received by the students and that the reduced tutor to student ratio and lack of inpatient encounters did not appear to adversely affect their learning.