Performance of International Medical Students In psychosocial medicine

• Published in: BMC medical education 2017-07, Vol.17 (1), p.111-111, Article 111
• Main Authors: Huhn, D, Lauter, J, Roesch Ely, D, Koch, E, Möltner, A, Herzog, W, Resch, F, Herpertz, S C, Nikendei, C
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Academic achievement; Acculturation; Bipolar Disorder - diagnosis; Borderline personality disorder; Checklist; Clinical Competence; Clinical Decision-Making; Communication; Communication Barriers; Conversational skills; Dementia; Dementia - diagnosis; Education; Educational Measurement; Ethnicity; Examination performance; Female; Foreign Medical Graduates - standards; Foreign students; Health education; Humans; Individualized Instruction; Internal Medicine; International medical students; Language; Language Acquisition; Learning; Male; Medical education; Medical schools; Medical students; Medicine; Multiple choice; OSCE; Physical Examination; Physician-Patient Relations; Post traumatic stress disorder; Psychosocial medicine; Social psychology; Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic - diagnosis; Suicidal behavior; Suicidal Ideation; Task Performance and Analysis; Teaching
• ISSN: 1472-6920; 1472-6920
• DOI: 10.1186/s12909-017-0950-z

Particularly at the beginning of their studies, international medical students face a number of language-related, social and intercultural challenges. Thus, they perform poorer than their local counterparts in written and oral examinations as well as in Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs) in the fields of internal medicine and surgery. It is still unknown how international students perform in an OSCE in the field of psychosocial medicine compared to their local fellow students. All students (N = 1033) taking the OSCE in the field of psychosocial medicine and an accompanying written examination in their eighth or ninth semester between 2012 and 2015 were included in the analysis. The OSCE consisted of four different stations, in which students had to perform and manage a patient encounter with simulated patients suffering from 1) post-traumatic stress disorder, 2) schizophrenia, 3) borderline personality disorder and 4) either suicidal tendency or dementia. Students were evaluated by trained lecturers using global checklists assessing specific professional domains, namely building a relationship with the patient, conversational skills, anamnesis, as well as psychopathological findings and decision-making. International medical students scored significantly poorer than their local peers (p