Assessing oral communication skills of EFL novice medical students: interactional competence and the Roter Interaction Analysis System

Jego, Eric Hajime (2022). Assessing oral communication skills of EFL novice medical students: interactional competence and the Roter Interaction Analysis System. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

This thesis is a pedagogically motivated study which sought to create a new assessment tool to measure the oral communication skills of novice Japanese medical students within the context of medical history taking. This new assessment, known as the Japan Functional History Taking Assessment, or JFHTA, was created by merging principles from two domains, language teaching theory and health care communications theory. The first main theoretical pillar of this thesis, Interactional Competence (IC), is a construct from language teaching/learning that has recently been receiving an increasing amount of attention in applied linguistics, particularly in oral communication assessment. The second main theoretical pillar is the Roter Interaction Analysis System (RIAS), which is a widely used system for categorising utterances in a patient encounter for various purposes including assessment. Existing assessment tools were found to be unsuitable for this demographic of student for the following reasons: an overemphasis on clinical skills and a lack of discriminating power to effectively distinguish levels of performance. JFHTA is unique in that it is the only assessment tool designed for novice Japanese medicals students, which attempts to accomplish the following 2 objectives: (1) combine RIAS with IC balancing objective measures with subjective measures appropriately (2) distinguish levels of performance based mainly on patient-centredness while also considering English proficiency. Being primarily a pedagogically driven investigation, this thesis sought to contribute to medical education by creating a balanced assessment tool for novice medical students with very limited clinical training which focuses primarily on patient-centred communication skills while giving due consideration to other important factors such as professionalism and English proficiency.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):