ArticleJournal of general internal medicine2024
Validity Evidence for the Physician Oral Language Observation Matrix as a Measure of Medical Spanish Proficiency.
Article in Journal of general internal medicine, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 9 citations in OpenAlex.
- Reliability and Validity of Patient Ratings and Clinician Self-Report in the Assessment of Clinician Non-English Language Skills.Journal of general internal medicine · 2026Observational
- Spanish-Speaking Resident Physicians in the United States: Aligning Workforce Skill and Population Need.Journal of immigrant and minority health · 2026Article
- Reproductive Health Communication in Spanish: A Standardized Patient-Based Module for Second-Year Medical Students.MedEdPORTAL : the journal of teaching and learning resources · 2026Article
- Language Proficiency Improvements After Longitudinal and Intensive Medical Spanish Courses.Cureus · 2025Article
- An Exploratory Investigation of Heritage and Educational Language Exposures as Factors in Medical Student Spanish Language Proficiency.Journal of general internal medicine · 2025Article
- Language Proficiency: How the Physician Data Initiative's Data Collection and Reporting Standard Impacts Graduate Medical Education.Journal of graduate medical education · 2025Article
- Physicians' Perspectives on Using Direct Observation to Assess Non-English Language Proficiency for Clinical Practice: A Qualitative Study.Joint Commission journal on quality and patient safety · 2025Article
- Medical Students as Medical Spanish Standardized Patients for Peer-to-Peer Communication Skills Practice and Feedback.MedEdPORTAL : the journal of teaching and learning resources · 2025Article
- Improving Assessment and Learning Environments for Graduate Medical Trainees to Advance Healthcare Language Equity.Journal of general internal medicine · 2024Article
- Qualified Multilingual Assessment Policy for US Medical Students: A National Delphi Consensus Study.Teaching and learning in medicineReview
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors at 6 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundThe lack of a standardized language assessment process for medical students and physicians communicating in a non-English language threatens healthcare quality and safety.
objectiveTo evaluate the validity of a new rating tool, the Physician Oral Language Observation Matrix (POLOM)™, in assessing medical students' oral communication with Spanish-speaking standardized patients (SPs).
designPOLOM scores were compared to measures of student medical Spanish proficiency to examine convergent validity and to measures of clinical performance to examine concurrent/criterion validity.
participantsForty-two students at two schools completed SP encounters between January 2021 and April 2022, and POLOM raters scored the videorecorded performances between January and June 2022. MAIN MEASURES: Two approaches to generating POLOM total scores were investigated: rater average and strict consensus. Convergent validity was examined via the POLOM's correlations with (1) the phone-based Clinician Cultural and Linguistic Assessment (CCLA) and (2) the self-rated Interagency Language Roundtable scale for healthcare (ILR-H). Concurrent/criterion validity was examined via correlations with (1) the Comunicación y Habilidades Interpersonales (CAI) scale, (2) a checklist completed by the SP, and (3) a faculty rating of the student's post-encounter clinical note. Pearson's correlations of r ≥ 0.5 and r ≥ 0.2 were considered evidence of convergent validity and concurrent/criterion validity, respectively. KEY
resultsBoth rater average and strict consensus POLOM scores were strongly correlated with ILR-H (r = 0.72) and CCLA (r ≥ 0.60), providing evidence of convergent validity. The POLOM was substantially correlated with the CAI (r ≥ 0.29), the SP Checklist (r = 0.32), and the faculty scoring of the student's clinical note (r ≥ 0.24), providing concurrent/criterion validity evidence.
conclusionsThe POLOM has demonstrated evidence of convergent and concurrent/criterion validity as a measure of medical students' Spanish proficiency during SP encounters. Additional research is needed to evaluate how the POLOM can be implemented with resident and practicing physicians, applied to other health professions, and adapted to other languages.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.