Using standardised patients to measure physicians' practice: validation study using audio recordings
BMJ 2002; 325 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.325.7366.679 (Published 28 September 2002) Cite this as: BMJ 2002;325:679- aVeterans Administration, Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, 11 301 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90073, USA
- bInstitute for Global Health, 74 New Montgomery St, San Francisco, CA 94105, USA
- Correspondence to: John W Peabody
- Accepted 1 August 2002
Abstract
Objective: To assess the validity of standardised patients to measure the quality of physicians' practice.
Design: Validation study of standardised patients' assessments. Physicians saw unannounced standardised patients presenting with common outpatient conditions. The standardised patients covertly tape recorded their visit and completed a checklist of quality criteria immediately afterwards. Their assessments were compared against independent assessments of the recordings by a trained medical records abstractor.
Setting: Four general internal medicine primary care clinics in California.
Participants: 144 randomly selected consenting physicians.
Main outcome measures: Rates of agreement between the patients' assessments and independent assessment.
Results: 40 visits, one per standardised patient, were recorded. The overall rate of agreement between the standardised patients' checklists and the independent assessment of the audio transcripts was 91% (κ. Disaggregating the data by medical condition, site, level of physicians' training, and domain (stage of the consultation) gave similar rates of agreement. Sensitivity of the standardised patients' assessments was 95%, and specificity was 85%. The area under the receiver operator characteristic curve was 90%.
Conclusions: Standardised patients' assessments seem to be a valid measure of the quality of physicians' care for a variety of common medical conditions in actual outpatient settings. Properly trained standardised patients compare well with independent assessment of recordings of the consultations and may justify their use as a “gold standard” in comparing the quality of care across sites or evaluating data obtained from other sources, such as medical records and clinical vignettes.
Footnotes
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Funding This research was funded by Grant IIR 98118-1 from the Veterans Affairs Health Services Research and Development Service. From July 1998 to June 2001 JWP was the recipient of a senior research associate career development award from the Department of Veterans Affairs.
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Conflict of interest None declared.