Standardized patients in the assessment of general practice consulting skills

This paper describes the use of standardized patient interviews as a means of assessing the consulting skills of fifth year medical students studying general practice. Interviews are restricted to a duration of 9 minutes and focus on either diagnostic or management tasks. Volunteers are trained to play standardized roles depicting common general practice presentations. A detailed marksheet has been developed to increase inter-examiner reliability, discourage global marking and incorporate a patient assessment of the student. Issues of reliability, validity and security in this form of assessment are discussed.