Assessing the Impact of Standardized Patient Encounters on Students' Medical History-taking Skills in Practice

Objective. To investigate whether exposing students to professional standardized patients (SPs) in a didactic course would impact the transferability of students' medical history-taking skills to practice. Methods. In 2018, peer role-play and virtual simulation activities were used to teach medical history-taking in a first-year physical assessment and medication administration course. An unannounced SP evaluated students' medical history-taking skills during a subsequent community introductory pharmacy practice experience (IPPE) using a 17-item medical history checklist. In 2019, 3 SP encounters were added to the course to supplement existing learning activities. This student cohort was then assessed by the same unannounced SP during their IPPE in summer 2019. Medical history-taking performance was compared with the 2018 control group to assess the impact of the changes to the course. Results. Thirty-nine students in both the summer 2018 and 2019 cohorts had usable data. There was a statistically significant increase in the 2019 mean composite score on the medical history checklist (24.3 vs 18.1). The 2019 cohort performed significantly better than the 2018 cohort in 7 of the 17 items on the checklist. The correlation between students' performance on the summative medical history-taking assessment during the course and their performance in practice was r=.15 in 2018 and r=.08 in 2019. Conclusion. Incorporating SPs into a physical assessment and medication administration course contributed to an improvement in students' ability to take a medical history in practice as compared with solely using a virtual patient simulation program.