Athletic Training Educators' Perceptions of Using Standardized Patients in Teaching

Abstract

Context: Standardized patients (SPs) are commonly used in health care education programs to teach and evaluate essential clinical skills. Research has largely focused on the role of SPs in evaluation, but little research has explored the use of SPs as an instructional tool. Objective: To explore athletic training educators' perceptions of using SPs as a teaching tool for students enrolled in Commission on Accreditation of Athletic Training Education (CAATE)-accredited professional athletic training programs. Design: The emergent design of this qualitative investigation was modeled after the consensual qualitative research approach. A semistructured interview protocol was used to allow for flexibility in accordance with the emergent design. To solicit participants, a purposeful sample of athletic training educators was acquired via snowball sampling. Setting: Individual teleconference interviews. Patients or Other Participants: 15 athletic training educators (11 women, 4 men) who teach in CAATE-accredited professional athletic training programs and use SPs as a teaching method were included. Data Collection and Analysis: We conducted individual interviews, transcribed each, and the data were analyzed and coded into common themes and categories until consensus was achieved by a 4-person research team. Triangulation of the data occurred via the use of multiple researchers and member checking to confirm the accuracy of the data. Results: Four themes related to participants' perceptions of SPs as a teaching method: (1) rationale, (2) benefits, (3) challenges, and (4) misconceptions. Participants identified several reasons for using SPs, including a safe environment, increased confidence and decision making, exposure to patient encounters, unique case exposure, and fidelity. Benefits included experience with interpersonal communication, history taking, systematic evaluation/examination, self-reflective practice, and decision making. Participants discussed the experience students were given to communicate with a patient and perform an evaluation while making clinical decisions and reflect on their performance during and following the encounter. However, implementation did not come without challenges, including time, personnel resources, and physical resources. Through the participants' description of their use of SPs, we identified misconceptions about the implementation of teaching SPs. Many participants indicated they selected SPs from among classmates or peers, decreasing the psychological fidelity of the activity. Participants described evaluative SP encounters and not teaching encounters. Participants did not describe encounters where the faculty, student, and even SP interacted when needed for learning purposes throughout the encounter. These misconceptions suggest that teaching SP practices may be misunderstood by athletic training educators. Conclusions: These findings highlight the value of SPs as a teaching method. Standardized patient encounters provide participants an opportunity to expose students to various pathologies in a controlled environment, which promotes a learning experience for the student where mistakes can occur with no harm to the patient. Athletic training educators also face challenges in implementing teaching SPs. Standardized patients are a complex teaching and evaluative tool that requires training and education to properly use. Faculty are encouraged to seek out immersive and hands-on workshops to learn how to properly use SPs. ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR