Can general surgery interns accurately measure their own technical skills? Analysis of cognitive bias in surgical residents’ self-assessments

A scoping review of self‐monitoring in graduate medical education

“…A self‐judgement of poor performance after the completion of a task will not help the patient under‐the‐knife or with their discharge paperwork in hand, even if it may improve future practice; however, an iterative self‐judgement of performance after components of a task may well influence outcomes. Additionally, although the post‐task self‐judgement of procedural skills suggests decent accuracy, 19,20,29,31,32,45,48,53,54,61,64,65,70,71,76,77,84,88 findings within a procedural context do not uniformly translate to non‐procedural contexts. Beyond the accuracy of self‐monitoring, several studies actually showed improved procedural skills 52,54–56,65,76 .…”

“…Additionally, although the post‐task self‐judgement of procedural skills suggests decent accuracy, 19,20,29,31,32,45,48,53,54,61,64,65,70,71,76,77,84,88 findings within a procedural context do not uniformly translate to non‐procedural contexts. Beyond the accuracy of self‐monitoring, several studies actually showed improved procedural skills 52,54–56,65,76 . Future research in the procedural realm should build off the demonstrated accuracy of self‐monitoring, explore the optimal timing of self‐monitoring and study the likely positive impact of self‐monitoring on clinical practice.…”

“…In addition, self-monitoring could have positive impacts on patient-level outcomes 57 and workplace clinical behaviours. 58,59 Most of the studies that measured self-monitoring, however, focused on the accuracy of self-judgement of performance compared with an expert rating, 22,[29][30][31][32][34][35][36]44,45,[60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71] peer rating 35,72 or standardised clinical management. [37][38][39]47,[73][74][75] Studies showed everything from no agreement to strong agreement between self-ratings and expert ratings.…”

Reflect on Thyself: Interns' Reflection upon Their Strengths and Weaknesses

“…Additionally, experience is also critical. Novices and less-experienced learners can overestimate their performance (Kruger and Dunning 1999;Falchikov and Boud 1989), while interns performing above-average tend to assess themselves more negatively than average performers (Karnick et al, 2021). Positively, with practice, students can increasingly self-assess accurately (Dochy et al 1999).…”

“…The scholarship on the accuracy of students' self-evaluations is mixed. Some evidence suggests students overestimate their performance (Tejeiro et al 2012), while others suggest students underestimate their performance (Aleksandr Karnick et al 2021). In contrast, other scholars find that students are reasonably good at estimating their own performance (Falchikov and Boud's 1989;Atwater & Yammarino, 1997), matching external evaluators such as professors (Lopez and Kossack 2007;Barney et al, 2012;Leach 2012), teachers (Bol et al, 2012;Chang et al, 2012), researchers (Panadero and Romero, 2014), and expert medical assessors (Hawkins et al, 2012;Kardash 2000).…”