Assessment of resident physicians in professionalism, interpersonal and communication skills: a multisource feedback

To assess the internal validity and reliability of a multisource feedback (MSF) program by China Medical Board for resident physicians in China.

Multisource feedback was used to assess professionalism, interpersonal and communication skills. 258 resident physicians were assessed by attending doctors, self-evaluation, resident peers, nurses, office staffs, and patients who completed a sealed questionnaire at 19 hospitals in China. Cronbach's alpha coefficient was used to assess reliability. Validity was assessed by exploratory factor analyses and by profile ratings.

4128 questionnaires were collected from this study. All responses had high internal consistency and reliability (Cronbach's α > 0.90), which suggests that both questions and form data were internally consistent. The exploratory factor analysis with varimax rotation for the evaluators' questionnaires was able to account for 70 to 74% of the total variance.

The current MSF assessment tools are internally valid and reliable for assessing resident physician professionalism and interpersonal and communication skills in China.