An investigation of the use of simulated patients in audiology student education

Abstract

Audiologists are health care professionals responsible for the non-medical management of hearing and hearing disorders. A review of population and health statistics in Australia indicates that increasingly more audiologists are needed to service its growing and ageing population.The task of training audiologists falls to the universities that offer audiology programs. One of the biggest limiters on this training is the diminishing numbers of clinical placement opportunities available to the audiology students as a result of clinics external to the universities withdrawing their support of student training (due mostly to commercial pressures). As a result, many university audiology programs have begun to investigate simulation as a method of preparing students for clinical placements, and in particular, simulated patients (SPs).While SPs have been used widely in medicine and allied health professional education, only two studies have been conducted on their use in audiology. While both studies showed audiology students enjoyed working with SPs, neither showed if this work results in measurable gains in student skills.To investigate the potential of using SPs to train basic audiology skills in audiology students, the present research aimed to: (1) develop a tool for assessing the clinical skills of students working with SPs; and (2) compare the effectiveness of SP training versus seminar training for improving the clinical skills of first year audiology students.To develop a tool for assessing audiology students taking a case history from and giving feedback to a simulated patient (SP), a tool from the cognate discipline of speech pathology was modified for use on audiology students. The modified tool, the Audiology Simulated Patient Interview Rating Scale (ASPIRS), was then used by three evaluators to assess 24 first-year masters of audiology students taking case histories from and providing feedback to SPs. Analysis of the 3To compare seminar training versus SP training as methods for training audiology students to take case histories from and give feedback to adult patients, a randomised controlled trial with cross-over design was used to put 24 first-year audiology students through SP then seminar training (n=12) or seminar then SP training (n=12). The SP training involved one student per SP in a clinic setting with individualized feedback. The seminar training involved one academic staff member for the student group in a seminar setting with group feedback. The students were assessed taking a case history and giving feedback to an SP before the first training block, between the two training blocks, and after the final training block. A mixed model analyses of derived factors for case history and feedback showed significant (p<0.05) effects for assessment occasion (i.e., student skills improved with more training) but not for training sequence (i.e., order of training did not affect skill improvements) or training type (i.e., type of training did not affect skill improvements). Results indicated that ...