Effect of the Objective Structured Teaching Exercises on Education Skills of Clinical Professionals Using Standardized Students and Patients

Introduction: Objective Structured Teaching Exercises (OSTEs) provide a systematic framework for evaluating educational competencies through direct observation. This study aimed to train and validate medical students as standardized students (SSs) and psychology students as standardized patients (SPs), assessing their effectiveness in enhancing the communication skills of clinical instructors. Methods: This developmental research was conducted from February to October 2019, encompassing three phases: preparation, training, and validation. In the preparation phase, an expert committee established clinical cases based on literature regarding depressive disorders and created assessment checklists. The training phase included workshops for both SSs and SPs, where participants engaged in scenario practice and received constructive feedback. The validation phase involved evaluating the performance of SSs and SPs using a 12-item evaluation scale to ensure reliability, with the Kappa coefficient employed to assess the agreement among evaluators. Results: A total of 16 participants were involved in each group (SSs and SPs). Both groups exhibited high validity in their portrayals, exceeding 90%, with mean scores of 2.87 for SSs and 2.83 for SPs. Reliability assessments yielded high coefficients of 0.986 for SSs and 0.977 for SPs, indicating consistent performance. The Kappa coefficients for checklist completion were robust: SSs scored 0.872, while SPs achieved 0.710, with the Gold Teacher attaining a perfect Kappa score of 1.000. Conclusion: These findings demonstrate the effectiveness of both SSs and SPs in facilitating the development of communication skills among clinical educators through structured feedback in the OSTE format. Both SSs and SPs displayed exceptional validity and reliability in their roles, establishing them as effective tools for evaluating and enhancing the communication skills of clinical educators. These findings emphasized the potential of integrating standardized roles in medical education to enhance pedagogical effectiveness and improve patient care.