How can key psychiatric skills such as empathy and building rapport with patients be assessed?
All the OSCE stations in the College examinations will have communication skills as an objective. In practice it is not difficult to identify the candidate who is unable to establish rapport and empathise with the patient. Inability to use all the well-known interviewing techniques such as open-to-closed cone questions, summary and reflective statements will indicate to examiners that this is a poor candidate. In the College s pilot OSCE held in April 2002, the reliability of the simulated patients assessment of the candidates communication skills was tested. In North America, simulated patients opinions are taken into account in determining the candidate s final mark. There is no intention to do this in the College examinations. However, we will have data, following the next pilot examination, to explore this issue in more detail.
