Clinical supervisor evaluations during general surgery clerkships

Abstract

Background: Clerkship performance is commonly evaluated by consultant surgeons who seldom supervise medical students directly. In contrast, surgical residents and interns frequently supervise students and provide essential teaching but are not tasked with evaluating them. Aim: To prospectively investigate and compare the accuracy of general surgery clerkship performance evaluations by clinical supervisors of differing seniorities. Method: Between September 2008 and May 2010, clinical supervisors of varying seniorities independently evaluated 57 fourthyear medical students using a multi-dimensional performance evaluation tool. Total evaluation grades and subtotal grades for clinical ability were correlated to the results of a validated surgical objective structured clinical examination (OSCE). Results: In this study, 85 clinical supervisors provided 427 student performance evaluations. Total evaluation grades awarded by consultant surgeons had weak correlation to student OSCE results (r ¼ 0.27, p 5 0.05) and associated subtotal grades for clinical ability had no correlation. In comparison, the equivalent sets of grades awarded by residents and interns had moderate correlations to OSCE results (r ¼ 0.49 and r ¼ 0.54, p 5 0.01). Conclusions: Validity of clinical supervisor evaluations during general surgery clerkships vary according to assessor seniority. Including performance evaluation grades by surgical residents and interns may enhance the overall validity of this common clerkship evaluation tool and improve its summative and formative assessment value.

Assessment Methods of an Undergraduate Psychiatry Course at a Saudi University = أساليب تقييم مساق الطب النفسي للطلاب في جامعة سعودية

“…The student' scores on the OSCE correlated well with the results in clinical examinations and explained a great part of the variance in total clinical marks. Similar findings have been reported in different specialties from different countries; [13][14][15] however, these studies did not show a correlation between the results of the OSCE and the MCQs. This may be attributed to the fact that MCQs assess the students' cognitive abilities, covering the area of 'knows' and 'knows how' of Miller's pyramid of assessment, and possibly spanning the levels of Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives, from the level of comprehension to the level of evaluation.…”

Students’ expectations on the surgery clerkship exceed those of residents and faculty

“…Additionally, clinical supervisor evaluations may be used to assess the educational experience on the surgery clerkship. However, the clinical supervisor evaluations may not reliably document the achievement of learning objectives [7]. In order to develop the most accurate representation of the educational experience on the surgery clerkship, we developed a surgery-specific questionnaire based on the work of De et al [8].…”

Automated video-based assessment of surgical skills for training and evaluation in medical schools

“…Medical literature recognizes the need for objective surgical skill assessment in surgical training [4]. Yu et al [5] Table 1 Summary of the OSATS scoring system [3] The score is a Likert scale from levels 1-5, but the guidelines are provided only for levels 1, 3, and 5. The diversity of the criteria, lack of guidelines for all levels, and the need to manually observe each surgeon, makes the manual OSATS scoring a time-consuming and challenging process have suggested evaluations from residents and interns who frequently supervise the students instead of the consultant surgeons who do not have the opportunity to directly observe the medical students.…”