Trainees’ Perceptions of Practitioner Competence During Patient Transfer

BACKGROUND: Technical and communicative skills are both important features for one's perception of practitioner competence. PURPOSE: This research examines how trainees' perceptions of practitioner competence change as they view health care practitioners who vary in their technical and communicative skill proficiencies. METHODS: Occupational therapy students watched standardized encounters of a practitioner performing a patient transfer in combinations of low and high technical and communicative proficiency and then reported their perceptions of practitioner competence. RESULTS: The reports indicate that technical and communicative skills have independently identifiable impacts on the perceptions of practitioner competency, but technical proficiency has a special impact on the students' perceptions of practitioner communicative competence. CONCLUSIONS: The results are discussed with respect to the way in which students may evaluate their own competence on the basis of either technical or communicative skill. The issue of how this may lead trainees to dedicate their independent learning efforts to an incomplete set of features needed for the development of practitioner competency is raised.