ArticleBMJ open2020
Added value of assessing medical students' reflective writings in communication skills training: a longitudinal study in four academic centres.
Article in BMJ open, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 21 citations in OpenAlex.
- "It turns out I was wrong": a thematic analysis of medical students' reflective writing in an e-learning course on communication skills.BMC medical education · 2025Article
- Assessing the impact of clerkships on the growth of clinical knowledge.Annals of medicine · 2025Article
- Empowering Medical Education: Unveiling the Impact of Reflective Writing and Tailored Assessment on Deep Learning.Journal of advances in medical education & professionalism · 2024Article
- Reflect to interact - fostering medical students' communication through reflection-focused e-learning.BMC medical education · 2024Article
- A systematic scoping review of reflective writing in medical education.BMC medical education · 2023Article
- Teaching and assessing communication skills in the postgraduate medical setting: a systematic scoping review.BMC medical education · 2021Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 4 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectivesThis study describes the development and implementation of a model to assess students' communication skills highlighting the use of reflective writing. We aimed to evaluate the usefulness of the students' reflections in the assessment of communication skills.
designThird-year and fourth-year medical students enrolled in an elective course on clinical communication skills development were assessed using different assessment methods. SETTING AND
participantsThe communication skills course was offered at four universities (three in Brazil and one in Portugal) and included 69 students. OUTCOME MEASURES: The students were assessed by a Multiple-Choice Questionnaire (MCQ), an objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) and reflective writing narratives. The Cronbach's alpha, dimensionality and the person's correlation were applied to evaluate the reliability of the assessment methods and their correlations. Reflective witting was assessed by applying the Reflection Evaluation for Enhanced Competencies Tool Rubric (Reflect Score (RS)) to measure reflections' depth, and the Thematic Score (TS) to map and grade reflections' themes.
resultsThe Cronbach alpha for the MCQ, OSCE global score, TS and RS were, respectively, 0.697, 0.633, 0.784 and 0.850. The interobserver correlation for the TS and RS were, respectively, 0.907 and 0.816. The assessment of reflection using the TS was significantly correlated with the MCQ (r=0.412; p=0.019), OSCE (0.439; p=0.012) and RS (0.410; p=0.020). The RS did not correlate with the MCQ and OSCE.
conclusionsAssessing reflection through mapping the themes and analysing the depth of reflective writing expands the assessment of communication skills. While the assessment of reflective themes is related to the cognitive and behavioural domains of learning, the reflective depth seems to be a specific competence, not correlated with other assessment methods-possibly a metacognitive domain.
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