Professors from Católica Medical School, have developed and validated a new instrument designed to assess the performance of simulated patients in medical education.

The study, recently published in the journal Medical Teacher, introduces the Lisbon Assessment of Simulated Patients (LASP) scale, a concise and reliable tool that evaluates two key aspects of simulated patient performance: the quality of role-play during clinical encounters and the quality of feedback provided to medical students.

Simulated patients play a crucial role in medical training by helping students develop communication skills in realistic clinical scenarios. However, many existing evaluation instruments are either too lengthy, focus on only one aspect of performance, or fail to distinguish between role-play and feedback.

The LASP scale addresses this gap by offering a practical 10-item instrument with two distinct domains—Role Play and Feedback—allowing educators to identify specific strengths and areas for improvement in simulated patient performance. The tool demonstrated strong validity and reliability based on data from 629 evaluations completed by 180 medical students and 15 tutors assessing 25 simulated patients.

According to the authors, the LASP scale can support quality assurance and faculty development in simulation-based education, contributing to more effective communication training for future physicians.

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