Assessing the teaching of technical skills

Background There is a lack of structured instruments to assess how technical skills are taught. We aimed to develop a practical assessment tool that is easy to use and will assess the teaching of technical skills. Methods A 5-point Likert global rating scale was constructed. An experienced surgeon independently assessed each surgery using the assessment tool. Trainees also used the assessment tool after the surgery. Results Forty-two surgeries were assessed: 26 open and 16 laparoscopic surgeries. Interrater reliability between the independent assessor and trainees was performed using a κ coefficient of .77 and a P value of less than .05. Conclusions Our study shows that our assessment instrument has a potential ability to assess any taught technical task. We will continue and expand the study in surgery, and we aim to expand it further to medical specialties (eg, internal medicine, and so forth) that also teach technical tasks (eg, chest drain insertion, and so forth).