Clinical skills assessment of procedural and advanced communication skills: performance expectations of residency program directors.

Background: High stakes medical licensing programs are planning to augment and adapt current examinations to be relevant for a two-decision point model for licensure: entry into supervised practice and entry into unsupervised practice. Therefore, identifying which skills should be assessed at each decision point is critical for informing examination development, and gathering input from residency program directors is important.

Methods: Using data from previously developed surveys and expert panels, a web-delivered survey was distributed to 3,443 residency program directors.

Assessing the communication and interpersonal skills of graduates of international medical schools as part of the United States Medical Licensing Exam (USMLE) Step 2 Clinical Skills (CS) Exam.

Background: The ability to communicate effectively with patients is an essential element of a physician's clinical expertise.

Method: As part of the USMLE Step 2 Clinical Skills exam, standardized patients (SPs) provided ratings of communication and interpersonal skills (CIS) along three dimensions. Assessment data from a one-year (2006) cohort of graduates of international medical schools (IMGs) were analyzed and psychometric characteristics of the CIS measures are described.