Seven Years of Teaching Communication With the Patient-Centered Observation Form

For years, family medicine has taught patient-centered communication through observations and observation checklists. We explored the utility of one checklist, the Patient-Centered Observation Form (PCOF), to teach and evaluate patient-centered communication in our family medicine residencies.

We conducted a mixed-method study of five University of Minnesota Family Medicine Residencies' seven years of experience teaching and evaluating residents' patient-centered communication skills. All programs have a behavioral health (BH) faculty-led observation curriculum that uses the PCOF to assess resident skills and give feedback. We conducted a BH faculty focus group and interviews, generated themes from the BH responses, and then queried family medicine (FM) faculty regarding these themes through an online survey.

Ten BH faculty participated in the focus group/interviews, and 71% (25/35) of FM faculty completed the survey about themes derived from the BH interviews. The residencies complete between 1 to 11 observations per resident per year. Since implementation, four programs have continuously used the PCOF due to its versatility, design as a formative rather than summative feedback tool, and relative ease of use. BH faculty believe longitudinal observations with the PCOF resulted in improved resident patient-centered communication. Most importantly, all faculty described a shift in family medicine culture toward patient-centered communication. Time for observations and feedback is the primary curricular barrier.

Our findings support the utility of the PCOF for teaching and evaluating patient-centered communication in family medicine training.