Assessing the Impact of Standardized Patient Encounters on Students’ Medical History-taking Skills in Practice

Abstract

Objective: To investigate whether exposing students to professional standardized patients (SPs) in a didactic course would impact transferability of students’ medical history-taking skills to practice.

Methods: In 2018, peer role-play and virtual simulation activities were used to teach medical history-taking in a first-year physical assessment and medication administration course (PHM 326). An unannounced SP evaluated students’ medical history-taking skills during a subsequent community introductory pharmacy practice experience (IPPE) using a 17-item medical history checklist. In 2019, three SP encounters were added to PHM 326 to supplement existing learning activities. This student cohort was then assessed by the same unannounced SP during their IPPE in summer 2019. Medical history-taking performance was compared with the 2018 control group to assess the impact of the PHM 326 course changes.

Results: Thirty-nine students in both the summer 2018 and 2019 cohorts had usable data. There was a statistically significant increase in 2019 in the mean composite score on the medical history checklist (24.3 vs 18.1). The 2019 cohort performed significantly better than the 2018 cohort in seven of the 17 items on the checklist. The correlation between students’ performance on the summative medical history-taking assessment during PHM 326 and their performance in practice was r=.15 in 2018 and r=.08 in 2019.

Conclusion: Incorporating SPs into a physical assessment and medication administration course contributed to an improvement in students’ ability to take a medical history in practice as compared with solely using a virtual patient simulation program.