Using the communication assessment tool in family medicine residency programs

The Communication Assessment Tool (CAT), developed by Makoul et al assesses patient perceptions of physicians' interpersonal and communication skills. The objective of this study was to gather initial benchmarking data for the use of the CAT in family medicine residency programs.

Data were collected from patients seeing 127 residents from six family medicine residency programs. A total of 1,931 patients completed the paper and pencil version of the CAT following an appointment with a resident; 1,880 of the CAT forms met the inclusion criteria for analysis.

The overall mean percentage of items from which residents were rated as excellent was 69.7%. Significant differences were found in the overall percentage of items rated as excellent based on training year, with PGY-1 (77.0%) residents being rated significantly higher than PGY-2 (69.5%) and PGY-3 (68.1%) residents. There were no significant differences found in the overall percentage of items rated as excellent based on the native language or gender of the residents.

This initial benchmarking data can allow family medicine residency programs to compare the performance of their residents with the performance of residents from other programs. We recommend that the results of the CAT be used as both an evaluative and learning tool.