Standardized Patients for Teaching Informed Consent

Abstract

Abstract Introduction Informed consent is about more than having a patient sign a form. This resource is a health literacy curriculum that was embedded in our fourth-year medical student course Gateway to Internship. The curriculum utilized encounters with standardized patients (SPs) because SPs have been shown to be useful in teaching communication and interpersonal skills to students. Students going into all specialties participated in these encounters. Methods The resource includes a didactic PowerPoint presentation introducing health literacy concepts, a didactic PowerPoint presentation reviewing informed consent, two SP scenarios, training modules, and communication checklists for SP feedback. The clinical scenarios are a patient needing a blood transfusion and the son/daughter of a patient with urosepsis who requires a central venous catheter insertion. Each PowerPoint presentation was an hour long; the SP encounters were each 25 minutes long, with a further 5 minutes allotted for feedback. Using the communication checklists, SPs gave real-time feedback on whether they understood what was being explained to them. Results This curriculum was well received. Students were asked how useful they thought the experience had been and on average rated it 4.3 on a 5-point Likert scale. The immediate feedback from the SPs was greatly appreciated by the students, who reported that they used feedback from the first encounter as they entered the second encounter. Many students requested more encounters to continue to refine their communication techniques. From formal evaluations completed by the SPs, 77% of students used the teach-back technique they had been taught in the didactics. Discussion These cases will be easily adaptable across levels of learner and specialties throughout medicine. Limitations to incorporating this curriculum include the cost of training and using SPs.

Keywords

• Informed Consent
• Blood Transfusion
• Central Line