Interrater Reliability of an Oral Case Presentation Rating Tool in a Pediatric Clerkship

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Composing and delivering effective oral case presentations is an important skill for medical students to learn, but the large variety of patients and presenting problems makes teaching and evaluating this skill complex. Few published tools are available for educators to use, and those that are described are not well studied. PURPOSE: The authors describe the development of the Patient Presentation Rating tool and the study to establish its interrater reliability. METHODS: Three raters reviewed 15 recorded new patient presentations delivered by 3rd-year medical students on their pediatrics clerkship. Intraclass correlation coefficients were used to determine the interrater reliability of the tool as a whole, its subsections, and each individual item. RESULTS: The tool was found to reliably rate the technical aspects of presenting patients as well as several aspects of clinical reasoning embedded in that process. CONCLUSIONS: The Patient Presentation Rating tool is a reliable instrument for evaluating medical students' oral patient presentations.