Using a structured clinical coaching program to improve clinical skills training and assessment, as well as teachers’ and students’ satisfaction

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Table

Practice points

The delivery of clinical skills programs needs to be structured to ensure all students are taught, can practice and are assessed reliably on all relevant skills. Large student numbers threaten the validity of OSCEs. Highly structured clinical skills programs may remove the need for OSCEs. Students and clinical tutors are more confident with a structured clinical skills program. General Practitioners commonly have more experience and confidence to teach basic clinical skills to medical students than hospital specialists.

Figure 1. Comparison of the structured clinical coaching program at the research site and the traditional clinical coaching program at the control site.

Figure 2. Comparison of mean scores at start and finish of body systems (1 = Unseen–5=Very confident). Note: (*SD = Standard deviation).

Table 1.  Correlation of aggregated mean scores for research students (all raters, all systems)

	Peer students r, p	Original tutor r, p	Peer tutor r, p	Self confidence r, p
Peer students		0.36, <0.001	0.92, <0.001	0.29, <0.001
Original tutor	0.36, <0.001		0.38, <0.001	0.23, =0.004
Peer tutor	0.92, <0.001	0.38, =0.06		0.35, <0.001
Self confidence	0.29, <0.001	0.23, =0.004	0.35, <0.001

Figure 3. Comparison of summative and formative assessment scores.

Figure 4. Comarison of costs – OSCE's vs. clinical coaching program.