Objective

To examine whether resident communication skills evaluated through patient satisfaction surveys demonstrate evidence of decline through the 3 years of internal medicine residency.

Methods

Data for this study were collected retrospectively from a database of patient satisfaction surveys completed for internal medicine residents at different levels of training. Patient satisfaction was measured with the Aggregated EVGFP (excellent, very good, good, fair, or poor) questionnaire recommended by the American Board of Internal Medicine.

Results

Over a span of 5 years (2005–2009), a total of 768 patient rating forms were completed for 67 residents during their 3 years of residency training. In postgraduate year (PGY)–1, the residents had a mean satisfaction rating of 4.33 ± 0.48 compared to a mean rating of 4.37 ± 0.45 in their PGY-3 year. Analysis of variance indicated no significant difference by PGY level.

Conclusion

Our findings demonstrate that resident communication skills and patient satisfaction do not decline during the 3 years of residency. This is contrary to our hypothesis that patient satisfaction would worsen as residents progressed through training.

Background

The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) Outcome Project requires that residency program directors objectively document that their residents achieve competence in 6 general dimensions of practice.

Intervention

In November 2007, the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) and the ACGME initiated the development of milestones for internal medicine residency training. ABIM and ACGME convened a 33-member milestones task force made up of program directors, experts in evaluation and quality, and representatives of internal medicine stakeholder organizations. This article reports on the development process and the resulting list of proposed milestones for each ACGME competency.

Outcomes

The task force adopted the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition as a framework the internal medicine milestones, and calibrated the milestones with the expectation that residents achieve, at a minimum, the “competency” level in the 5-step progression by the completion of residency. The task force also developed general recommendations for strategies to evaluate the milestones.

Discussion

The milestones resulting from this effort will promote competency-based resident education in internal medicine, and will allow program directors to track the progress of residents and inform decisions regarding promotion and readiness for independent practice. In addition, the milestones may guide curriculum development, suggest specific assessment strategies, provide benchmarks for resident self-directed assessment-seeking, and assist remediation by facilitating identification of specific deficits. Finally, by making explicit the profession's expectations for graduates and providing a degree of national standardization in evaluation, the milestones may improve public accountability for residency training.

Aim

To develop a brief scale for measuring patient’s perceptions of their physician’s empathic engagement and to provide preliminary evidence in support of aspects of the scale’s psychometrics.

Method

Study comprised 225 patients, out of 436 patients (52% response rate) seen by 166 residents in the internal medicine residency program at the Jefferson Hospital Ambulatory Clinic as part of their ambulatory training at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. A 5-item questionnaire entitled the Jefferson Scale of Patient’s Perceptions of Physician Empathy was developed and administered to the study participants. Its factor structure, item-total score correlations, and correlations with several relevant criterion measures were examined.

Results

Factor analysis indicated that the scale was measuring a single factor of emphatic engagement. Item scores and total scores of the Jefferson Scale of Patient’s Perceptions of Physician Empathy yielded significant correlations with the American Board of Internal Medicine patient ratings form and with selected items from other relevant instruments measuring physicians’ humanistic behavior and the appraisal of physicians’ performance.

Conclusions

A brief scale for assessing physician empathy from the patients’ perspective showed good psychometric characteristics and can be used for the assessment of patient outcomes.