Applying standardized patient methodology to teach and evaluate the communications skills of nutrition and pharmacy students

Standardized patient activities are a sophisticated tool for presenting clinical scenarios and simulations to students. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the use of standardized patients to teach and evaluate the communication and interviewing skills to interdisciplinary groups of nutrition (n = 19) and pharmacy (n = 24) students. Five focus groups were conducted to examine how students, working together as an interdisciplinary team, used their communication skills to conduct the standardized patient interview. Themes common to both nutrition and pharmacy students included the recognition of the standardized patient activity as a performance predictor of and applicability to future patient encounters. Each group positively described developing rapport with the standardized patient and acquiring confidence with their interviewing skills. This project demonstrated that a standardized patient experience to teach communication and interviewing skills to nutrition and pharmacy students was a useful interdisciplinary approach to prepare students for future patient encounters. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...