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Abstract:

Rationale: There has been substantive debate in the medical education literature about which format to use to assess communication skills. This debate raises the question about preferences for instruments based on global items, on checklist items, or on a mixed format. For example a global rating scale might be an instrument, which consists of four global ratings regarding empathy, degree of coherence in the interview, verbal expression and non-verbal expression. Such instrument can differentiate between students at different levels of training and can be used to evaluate the performance of advanced students as well as to catch subtleties and nuances. In turn, checklists can be used for formative assessment to monitor students` behavior and progress towards reaching stated goals. Checklists indicate if a student can accomplish the listed objectives. Depending on the purpose and the context of different assessment situations, any of these formats may be appropriate. Learning Objectives: Participants will gain experience in using the three different formats of communication skills assessment instruments. After the session they will be able to discuss the advantages, limitations, and challenges of each format. Session format/activities: In a plenary introduction, the workshop concepts and the theoretical background will be addressed in an interactive way (20 min). Next, participants will be asked to observe and rate a clinical encounter by using checklist instruments (15min), a second scenario using a global assessment instrument (15 min.) and a third one using a mixed format instrument (15 min). The participants will then be placed into facilitated active learning groups to discuss and compare each of the instruments observed and their applicability for specific assessment situations. (15 min). In a concluding plenary round take home messages will be assembled and later disseminated to participants (10 min). Evaluation: In order to reinforce what has been learned, participants will receive a reminder e-mail with the take home messages from the workshop one month after the conference. Participants will also be invited to fill out a workshop evaluation form to provide feedback to the workshop organizers.