Measuring Quality of Medical Student Performance at Contextualizing Care
1 other identifier
interventional
189
1 country
1
Brief Summary
During the project, fourth-year medical students participating in a Medicine sub-internship will be randomized to an intervention group or a control group; the intervention group will receive additional training in the application of qualitative methodology to elicit and incorporate contextual factors in the clinical encounter. All students will participate in an SP assessment consisting of four standardized patients (SPs), blinded to trial arm, presenting cases with and without important biomedical and contextual factors in a counterbalanced factorial design. Performance will be compared between trial arms; the investigators hypothesize better performance in the intervention arm. In addition, performance will be compared with United States Medical Licensing Exam (USMLE) Step 2 clinical knowledge scores to determine whether contextualizing ability is independent of clinical knowledge, and consistency of performance across individual SP cases will be studied to determine the number of cases necessary to achieve sufficient reliability for the assessment to be used.
Trial Health
Trial Health Score
Automated assessment based on enrollment pace, timeline, and geographic reach
participants targeted
Target at P75+ for not_applicable
Started Jul 2008
Typical duration for not_applicable
1 active site
Health score is calculated from publicly available data and should be used for screening purposes only.
Trial Relationships
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Study Timeline
Key milestones and dates
Study Start
First participant enrolled
July 1, 2008
CompletedPrimary Completion
Last participant's last visit for primary outcome
March 1, 2010
CompletedFirst Submitted
Initial submission to the registry
March 12, 2010
CompletedFirst Posted
Study publicly available on registry
March 17, 2010
CompletedStudy Completion
Last participant's last visit for all outcomes
June 1, 2010
CompletedResults Posted
Study results publicly available
May 6, 2011
CompletedMay 6, 2011
March 1, 2011
1.7 years
March 12, 2010
March 14, 2011
April 11, 2011
Conditions
Keywords
Outcome Measures
Primary Outcomes (3)
Developing an Appropriate Treatment Plan (for Contextual Variant of Encounters)
Probability that the learner writes a correct treatment plan for the standardized patient encounters undertaken at assessment at end of subinternship that include contextual red flags. All learners are scheduled to see 4 encounters, based on combinations of four cases and four potential variants (baseline, biomedical, contextual, biocontextual) with counterbalancing by study month; each has a single contextual variant encounter. Treatment plans are assessed by an investigator blinded to the learner's assignment to intervention or control group.
1 month
Probing for Contextual Issues
Probability that the learner probes contextual red flags raised in standardized patient encounters undertaken at assessment at end of subinternship. Each learner undertakes four encounters, each of which presents a contextual red flag that may or may not be probed; in a small number of cases, the standardized patient was ill and the learner undertook fewer than four encounters as a result. Assessment of probing is made by an investigator blinded to learner's assignment to group.
1 month
Probing for Biomedical Issues
Probability that the learner probes biomedical red flags raised in standardized patient encounters undertaken at assessment at end of subinternship. Each learner undertakes four encounters, each of which presents a biomedical red flag that may or may not be probed; in a small number of cases, the standardized patient was ill and the learner undertook fewer than four encounters as a result. Assessment of probing is made by an investigator blinded to learner's assignment to group.
1 month
Study Arms (2)
Contextualization workshop
EXPERIMENTALA four-hour course on contextualization.
Control
NO INTERVENTIONNo intervention
Interventions
A four-hour course on contextualization.
Eligibility Criteria
You may qualify if:
- Fourth-year medical students at University of Illinois at Chicago
Contact the study team to confirm eligibility.
Sponsors & Collaborators
Study Sites (1)
University of Illinois at Chicago
Chicago, Illinois, 60612, United States
Related Publications (1)
Schwartz A, Weiner SJ, Harris IB, Binns-Calvey A. An educational intervention for contextualizing patient care and medical students' abilities to probe for contextual issues in simulated patients. JAMA. 2010 Sep 15;304(11):1191-7. doi: 10.1001/jama.2010.1297.
PMID: 20841532RESULT
MeSH Terms
Conditions
Condition Hierarchy (Ancestors)
Limitations and Caveats
Small number of cases and variants. Alternating assignment of site to intervention/control. Substantial drop-out (sensitivity analysis finds results robust to conservative imputation for drop-outs).
Results Point of Contact
- Title
- Dr. Alan Schwartz
- Organization
- University of Illinois at Chicago
Study Officials
- PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Alan Schwartz, PhD
University of Illinois at Chicago
Publication Agreements
- PI is Sponsor Employee
- No
- Restrictive Agreement
- No
Study Design
- Study Type
- interventional
- Phase
- not applicable
- Allocation
- RANDOMIZED
- Masking
- SINGLE
- Who Masked
- OUTCOMES ASSESSOR
- Intervention Model
- PARALLEL
- Sponsor Type
- OTHER
Study Record Dates
First Submitted
March 12, 2010
First Posted
March 17, 2010
Study Start
July 1, 2008
Primary Completion
March 1, 2010
Study Completion
June 1, 2010
Last Updated
May 6, 2011
Results First Posted
May 6, 2011
Record last verified: 2011-03