Requested a Different Doctor: Developing and Evaluating an OSCE Assessing Core Skills in Supporting Trainees Facing Patient Discrimination

Background: Suboptimal support for colleagues experiencing discrimination can adversely impact clinician well-being and patient care.

Aim: To describe resident performance and experience during an Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) case centered on supporting a trainee facing discrimination to inform enhanced, supportive learning environments.

Setting: Formative, internal medicine OSCE at a simulation center.

Participants: 148 second-year residents across 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022.

Program description: Residents had 10 min to support a Muslim standardized intern (SI) experiencing discrimination from a patient. The SI rated resident performance across Supervision, Relationship Development, and Support domains and provided written feedback. Post-OSCE evaluations elicited resident reflections on case challenges.

Program evaluation: Proficient residents (≥ 80% average score across domains, n = 85) performed better in all items, except in not acting defensive and collaborating with SI to develop follow-up plan, compared to non-proficient residents (n = 65). The SI described effective approaches to feeling supported, including using empathetic statements, stating personal stance on discrimination, exhibiting supportive body language, and verbalizing support. Stating knowledge of situation upfront was an area of improvement. Residents found engaging the distressed SI difficult.

Discussion: Use of an explicit discrimination OSCE case can help identify effective approaches to supporting targets of discriminatory patients to inform future training.