Standardized Patient and Standardized Interdisciplinary Team Meeting: Validation of a New Performance-Based Assessment Tool

The interdisciplinary team (IDT) approach is critical in the care of elderly adults. Performance-based tools to assess IDT skills have not been well validated. A novel assessment tool, the standardized patient (SP) and standardized interdisciplinary team meeting (SIDTM), consisting of two stations, was developed. First, trainees evaluate a SP hospitalized after a fall. Second, trainees play the role of the physician in a standardized IDT meeting with a standardized registered nurse (SRN) and standardized medical social worker (SMSW) for discharge planning. The SP-SIDTM was administered to 52 fourth-year medical students (MS4s) and six geriatric medicine fellows (GMFs) in 2011/12. The SP, SRN, and SMSW scored trainee performance on dichotomous checklists of clinical tasks and Likert scales of communication skills, which were compared according to level of training using t-tests. Trainees rated the SP-SIDTM experience as moderately difficult, length of time about right, and believability moderate to high. Reliability was high for both cases (Cronbach =0.73-0.87). Interobserver correlation between SRN and SMSW checklist scores (correlation coefficient (r)=0.82, P<.001) and total scores (r=0.69, P<.001) were high. The overall score on the SP-SIDTM case was significantly higher for GMF (75) than for MS4 (65, P=.002). These observations support the validity of this novel assessment tool.