PURPOSE: To determine whether faculty humanistic quality ratings for medical students in an Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) are associated with student OSCE scores and actual patient satisfaction in a university hospital outpatient (general internal medicine) clinic.
METHODS: Our study was conducted on final-year (sixth grade) medical students in 1998. Forty medical students took the OSCE and were evaluated by faculty internists for humanistic qualities during OSCE sessions. Patient satisfaction ratings for students were also obtained in an outpatient clinic by using six items from the American Board of Internal Medicine Patient Satisfaction Questionnaire (PSQ) . A total of 40 students were evaluated by 117 patients. A multiple regression analysis was used for this study.
RESULTS: In the OSCE, faculty humanistic quality ratings for students were associated with interview skills (p=0.004), but not with physical examination scores nor students' gender. However, patient satisfaction ratings were not statistically associated with faculty humanistic quality ratings for students, other OSCE scores nor with patients' demographic characteristics such as age, sex, occupation and education levels.
CONCLUSIONS: Faculty humanistic quality ratings for medical students taking the OSCE were not significantly associated with patient satisfaction at the outpatient clinic in our study.