Article Text
Abstract
Introduction Rheumatologists are the primary healthcare professionals responsible for patients with rheumatic diseases and should acquire medical ethical competencies, such as the informed consent process (ICP). The objective clinical structured examination is a valuable tool for assessing clinical competencies. We report the performance of 90 rheumatologist trainees participating in a station designed to evaluate the ICP during the 2018 and 2019 national accreditations.
Methods The station was validated and represented a medical encounter in which the rheumatologist informed a patient with systemic lupus erythematosus with clinically active nephritis about renal biopsy. A trained patient–actor and an evaluator were instructed to assess ICP skills (with a focus on kidney biopsy benefits, how the biopsy is done and potential complications) in obtaining formal informed consent, delivering bad news and overall communication with patients. The evaluator used a tailored checklist and form.
Results Candidate performance varied with ICP content and was superior for potential benefit information (achieved by 98.9% of the candidates) but significantly reduced for potential complications (37.8%) and biopsy description (42.2%). Only 17.8% of the candidates mentioned the legal perspective of ICP. Death (as a potential complication) was omitted by the majority of the candidates (93.3%); after the patient–actor challenged candidates, only 57.1% of them gave a clear and positive answer. Evaluators frequently rated candidate communications skills as superior (≥80%), but ≥1 negative aspect was identified in 69% of the candidates.
Conclusions Ethical competencies are mandatory for professional rheumatologists. It seems necessary to include an ethics competency framework in the curriculum throughout the rheumatology residency.
- informed consent
- education for health care professionals
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Footnotes
Contributors V P-R, CA A-S and E A-H were responsible for objective clinical structured examination conception. All the authors contributed to data collection, data analysis and interpretation. V P-R and I C-Y drafted the manuscript. All authors provided a critical revision of the manuscript and approved the final version of the manuscript. V P-R is the guarantor.
Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Competing interests None declared.
Patient consent for publication Not required.
Ethics approval We are reporting the performance of trainees in rheumatology, at a medical ethics station, during a national accreditation process, of which the results must be officially reported on an annual basis to the medical community and the society. In our country, accreditation is mandatory to work as a specialist, and information from certified specialists must be public and updated on an annual basis. Candidates agree upon application to the national accreditation process that the Mexican Accreditation Council for Rheumatology will analyse their performance and publish the results. In the manuscript, all data from candidates were deidentified, and no personal Information was available at any point.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Read the full text or download the PDF:
Other content recommended for you
- Assessment of competences in rheumatology training: results of a systematic literature review to inform EULAR points to consider
- FRI0606 The Method Used To Set Pass Marks in An Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) Determines The Overall Performance of Candidates during An Accreditation Process
- Standardised clients as assessors in a veterinary communication OSCE: a reliability and validity study
- Order effects in high stakes undergraduate examinations: an analysis of 5 years of administrative data in one UK medical school
- Skill based assessment
- Training and simulation for patient safety
- Added value of assessing medical students’ reflective writings in communication skills training: a longitudinal study in four academic centres
- Teaching residents how to break bad news: piloting a resident-led curriculum and feedback task force as a proof-of-concept study
- Communication skills assessment in the final postgraduate years to established practice: a systematic review
- How to break bad news and how to learn this skill: results from an international North-Eastern German Society for Gynecological Oncology (NOGGO) survey among physicians and medical students with 1089 participants