Faculty and patient evaluations of radiology residents’ communication and interpersonal skills

Objective: to assess communication and interpersonal skills (cis) of radiology residents through faculty and standardised patients (sp). methods: in this day-long objective structured clinical examination (osce) in january 2009, 42 radiology residents took part at six stations in karachi, each with a standardised patient and a faculty evaluator. each encounter lasted 15 minutes followed by independent assessments of the residents by both the evaluators. results: based on rating-scale evaluations, all cases had satisfactory internal consistency (cronbach's alpha 0.6 to 0.9). the alpha values were comparatively diminutive against the checklist scores. correlation among faculty was 0.6 (p<0.001) with the use of both the checklist and the rating scale. among standardised patient, intra-class correlation was 0.6 (p<0.001) for checklists and 0.7 (p=0.001) for rating scales. moderate to strong correlations (r=0.6 to 0.9) existed between checklist and rating scores by the same type of evaluator. correlations among the faculty and standardised patient using the same assessment tool were unimpressive. conclusion: both checklists and rating scales can serve as satisfactory assessment tools for communication and interpersonal skills using objective structured and clinical examination with the assistance of faculty and standardised patients.