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Construct: The Communication Assessment Tool (CAT) is a 14-item instrument developed in English to assess medical trainees' interpersonal communication skills from the patient's perspective in clinical settings. Background: Using validated instruments and simulated patients constitutes good practice in assessing doctor-patient communication. The CAT was designed for use in real practice, but has not yet been applied to assessing OB-GYN residents' delivery of bad news in Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) stations. This study aims to provide validity evidence for using the CAT to assess residents' interpersonal communication skills under difficult circumstances in a simulated clinical setting in Brazil. Approach : Cross-cultural adaptation comprised translation into Portuguese, synthesis of translations, and back-translation. Next, a committee of 10 external and independent experts rated the items for linguistic equivalence and relevance to the overall scale. Researchers used the expert ratings to produce a preliminary Brazilian-Portuguese version. This version was applied by four simulated patients to assess 28 OB-GYN residents completing two, 10-minute OSCE stations focused on delivering bad news. Item and scale content validity indices and internal-consistency reliability were calculated. Simulated patients were interviewed to clarify any doubt regarding the content and usability of the tool and their response process. Findings: Thirteen of the 14 items in the Brazilian-Portuguese version were considered "equivalent" by at least 70% of the experts. All items were considered relevant by 100% of the experts. The Item Content Validity Index ranged from .9 to 1, and the Scale Content Validity Index was .99. The instrument showed good reliability for both scenarios (Cronbach's alpha > .90). Simulated patients considered the CAT easy to understand and complete. Conclusions: This study provides validity evidence for using the Brazilian-Portuguese CAT in a simulated clinical environment to assess OB-GYN residents' delivery of bad news. Based on this study's findings, the OB-GYN Department organized an annual formative assessment for residents to improve their interpersonal communication skills. This version of the CAT may also be applicable to other specialties.

Competing Interests: The authors have no conflict of interests to declare.

Background: Effective assessments programs are a challenge in problem-based learning (PBL). One of the main principles of this educational setting is the Formative Assessment (FA). We hypothesized that students' performance assessed by FA in tutorial sessions in a PBL curriculum is related to other summative assessments., Objective: To investigate the correlation among FA in tutorial sessions with grades obtained in Objective Structured Clinical Evaluation (OSCE) and Progress Testing (PT) to better understand the assessment process in PBL medical teaching approach and to predict student's future performance., Design: An observational cross-sectional study was conducted comparing FA, OSCE and PT scores from 4th to 8th semester medical students. Correlation analyses were performed using pooled and separate data from the 4th and 8th semesters., Results: From the 5th to 8th semester, OSCE scores were smaller compared to the FA, while PT scores were lower in all stages. In the pooled data, the correlation analysis showed a significant positive relationship between grades on FA and OSCE, FA and PT and OSCE and PT. A significant correlation among the three assessments strategies was also detected in the 8 th semester, but not in the 4th semester., Conclusions: Assessment strategies in PBL approach, including FA, OSCE and PT, have positive correlations, which increases as the medical course becomes more complex.