Interviewing and counseling skills. Techniques for their evaluation.

Area of Science:

• Health Professions Education
• Medical Assessment
• Interpersonal Skills Evaluation

Background:

• Traditional health professional assessments focus on knowledge and cognitive skills.
• Evaluation of complex interpersonal skills, such as interviewing and counseling, remains underdeveloped in national examinations.
• Challenges include defining criteria, developing reliable observation procedures, standardizing evaluations, and setting proficiency standards.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review the progress and challenges in evaluating interviewing and counseling skills for health professionals.
• To explore the development of standardized assessment methods for these complex skills.
• To consider the relevance of these skills for dietitians.

Main Methods:

• Defining specific behaviors for acceptable and unacceptable interviewing and counseling skills.
• Utilizing interaction analysis techniques for accurate behavior recording.
• Employing standardized patient actors to ensure consistent testing conditions.

Main Results:

• Progress has been made in defining criteria and developing interaction analysis techniques.
• Standardized patient actors have enabled reliable and equivalent testing conditions.
• Research is ongoing into the efficacy of simulation-based assessments (paper-and-pencil, audiovisual).

Conclusions:

• Defining specific behaviors is key to evaluating interviewing and counseling skills.
• Standardized assessment procedures, including the use of actors, enhance reliability.
• Further research is needed on establishing proficiency standards and the specific application to fields like dietetics.