Medical Education Using Standardized Patients

Hoon-Ki Park

doi:10.7599/hmr.2012.32.1.35

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Park: Medical Education Using Standardized Patients

Review Article

Hanyang Medical Reviews

Hanyang Medical Reviews 2012; 32(1): 35-44.

Published online: 29 February 2012

DOI: https://doi.org/10.7599/hmr.2012.32.1.35

Medical Education Using Standardized Patients

Hoon-Ki Park, M.D., Ph.D.

Department of Medical Education, Hanyang University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea.

Corresponding author (hoonkp@hanyang.ac.kr)

Received 20 December 2011 Accepted 30 January 2012

(open-access):

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

This article is intended to review up to date knowledge about standardized patients (SPs) and SP-based objective structured clinical examinations (OSCE) in medical education. SPs have become almost indispensable in the education and training of health care professionals. The utilization of SPs provides an invaluable contribution to the creation of a safe, yet realistic, learner-centered environment. While SPs provide a realistic experience of patient interaction that can be evaluated by a third party observer, they can also be trained to assess the student's performance and provide feedback to the student with consistency. Standardization of the performance, recording student behaviors by well-developed checklists, and/or receiving feedback from the SPs are important parameters of the educational experience and provide a meaningful evaluation of student performance. In assessment, SPs are used most commonly in the context of formal examinations, often referred to as OSCEs. An OSCE should be prepared step by step according to principles of appropriate logistics. The validity of the OSCE assessment is increased by matching educational content with the balanced blue print matrix for comprehensive performance examination. The thorough training of all physician/SP raters involved during the whole observation time in which students interact with SPs is critical to the reliable OSCE. SP-based OSCE has its own limitations, so it is to be judged as one among many evaluation methods for competency and/or performance.

Keywords: Patient Simulation, Medical Education, Undergraduate, Competency-Based Education

Figures and Tables

Table 1

Educational Advantages of Standardized Patients Over Real Patients

Table 2

A Sample of Blueprint Matrix During a Comprehensive SP-Based Examination Composed of 16 Cases

SP, standardized patient; Hx, history taking; Px, physical examination; IS. information sharing; PPI, patient-physician interaction.

Numbers in parentheses are percent of checklist items in a case.

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