CLINICAL SKILLS TRAINING - DEVELOPING OBJECTIVE ASSESSMENT INSTRUMENTS

The purpose of this study was to develop objective assessment instrume nts for use in psychomotor skill training and to test the instruments for interobserver reliability. Two checklist style instruments, one fo r suturing and one for endotracheal intubation, were developed through a process of review of standard texts, consultation with local expert s and field testing. Following development they were used by paired ex aminers in an Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) setting to test the instruments for interobserver reliability. A total of 88 final year medical students were recruited from the five Ontario medic al schools to participate as examinees. The checklists worked well wit hin the practical constraints of a 10 minute OSCE station and demonstr ated a high level of interobserver reliability with Kappa scores of 0. 65 for the suturing checklist and 0.71 for the intubation checklist. F urthermore, the Kappa scores for individual checklist items served to identify items which demonstrated poor interobserver reliability and t hus highlighted them for review.