Assessing Family Medicine Residents' Communication Skills From the Patient's Perspective: Evaluating the Communication Assessment Tool

Abstract

Abstract Background The Communication Assessment Tool (CAT), a paper-based patient survey, is 1 method to assess residents' interpersonal and communication skills. To further enhance the interpretation of the CAT, benchmark data are needed. Objective We sought to expand upon initial benchmarking data for the use of the CAT as an evaluation tool in family medicine residency programs. Methods Data were collected on 120 residents from 7 family medicine residency programs. Following an appointment with a resident, 1703 patients completed the CAT. Results The overall mean percentage of items rated as excellent was 73%. Significant differences were found in the overall percentage of items rated as ?excellent? based on location of training (78% US graduate versus 71% international medical graduate) and native language of the resident (76% English speaking versus 69% non-English speaking). There were no significant differences found in the overall percentage of items rated as excellent based on the year of training or sex of the residents. Conclusions These benchmarking data allow family medicine residency programs to compare the performance of their residents with other programs. The CAT can be used as an evaluation and a learning tool in family medicine and may be applicable to other specialties.