Critical Synthesis Package: MAAS-Global

Abstract

Abstract This Critical Synthesis Package contains: (1) a Critical Analysis of the psychometric properties and the application to health sciences education of the Maastricht History-taking and Advice Scoring list Consisting of Global Items (MAAS-Global), and (2) a copy of the MAAS-Global and instruction manual developed by Jacques van Thiel, Paul Ram, and Jan van Dalen. The MAAS-Global measure is a 17-item observation checklist for assessing communication and clinical skills with a space for additional narrative feedback. Items are clustered into three sections: Communication Relative to Phase of the Encounter, Global Communication Skills, and Clinical Skills. Items are rated on a scale of Not Present, Poor, Unsatisfactory, Doubtful, Satisfactory, Good, and Excellent. It can be used with both video and real-time encounters. The instrument measures two dimensions of communication skills: patient-centered (affect-centered) and task-oriented (physician oriented) although one study identified only one dimension. Interrater reliability levels show significant variation across studies. Encounters with real patients have shown lower scores than encounters with standardized patients but fewer raters and encounters are needed to achieve reliability with real patients. No gender or age differences have been identified. Patient-centered skills have shown greater growth than the task-oriented communication skills in two studies. Limitations include the strong need to train the raters, and the large number of encounters and raters necessary to obtain reliable results. In addition most of the extant literature does not meet widely-accepted reliability criteria.

Keywords

• OSCE
• Communication Skills
• DREAM
• Directory and Repository of Educational Assessment Measures
• Instruments
• Video Assessment