Adolescent narrative comments in assessing medical students.

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Adolescent Health
• Communication Skills Training

Background:

• Adolescent medical interviewing presents unique teaching and assessment challenges.
• Programmatic assessment, focusing on assessment for learning via feedback, is gaining traction in medical education.
• The Structured Communication Adolescent Guide (SCAG) offers a tool for programmatic assessment using adolescent patient feedback.

Purpose of the Study:

• To qualitatively analyze written narrative feedback from adolescent patients using the SCAG tool.
• To compare SCAG numerical scores and grades between positive and negative feedback.
• To identify key themes and areas for improvement in adolescent medical interviewing.

Main Methods:

• Qualitative analysis of written narrative feedback from SCAGs.
• Non-standardized adolescent patients provided feedback to third-year medical students.
• Comparison of numerical scores and grades for positive versus negative feedback.

Main Results:

• Fifty percent of SCAGs included written narrative feedback.
• 'Approachable' and 'confidentiality concerns' were the most frequent positive and negative comments.
• The 'teen-only communication' section, including HEADSS, received the most negative comments and lower scores.

Conclusions:

• Confidentiality is a critical concern in adolescent patient interviews.
• Written narrative feedback from adolescents is highly valuable for identifying specific strengths and weaknesses.
• Adolescent feedback, particularly narrative comments, offers more nuanced insights than potentially inflated numerical scores or grades.