Development of a comprehensive vascular skills assessment for surgical trainees.

BACKGROUND: Although vascular skills are important to general surgeons, vascular surgery has become a separate specialty, and therefore, there may be an erosion of vascular skills acquired by general surgical trainees. The purpose of this study was to develop a reliable and valid comprehensive vascular skills assessment (CVSA) of both knowledge and technical skills. METHODS: Twenty-four of 38 general surgical residents at the University of British Columbia completed a two-part CVSA consisting of a written examination and a series of 4 technical stations in a skills laboratory. Technical performance was rated using validated scales. RESULTS: The mean overall CVSA score was 50%. The CVSA demonstrated construct validity, with improvement in scores with increasing postgraduate year level (P = .01). The overall reliability (Cronbach's alpha) was .90. CONCLUSIONS: The CVSA developed in this study is a comprehensive assessment of vascular skills that is both valid and reliable. It offers an objective and feasible assessment of general surgical trainees' vascular skills.

The assessment of technical and interpretative proficiency in echocardiography.

OBJECTIVES: We sought to assess the relationship between traditional measures of proficiency in echocardiography and an objective assessment of technical and interpretative skills. BACKGROUND: Determination of competency in echocardiography is currently based on the number of months of training, echocardiograms scanned, and echocardiograms interpreted. It has not been established whether completion of these requirements is a surrogate for competency. METHODS: In all, 22 cardiology fellows underwent an echocardiography objective structured clinical examination (OSCE). RESULTS: There was a correlation between the number of echocardiograms scanned and the interpretation (r = 0.45, P = .038) and scanning (r = 0.42, P = .048) scores. There was a weak correlation between the number of echocardiograms interpreted and interpretation scores (r = 0.33); and number of months of training and the scanning (r = 0.39) and interpretation (r = 0.42) scores. CONCLUSIONS: Technical and interpretative proficiency in echocardiography is not related to traditional measures. An objective assessment of acquisition and interpretation of echocardiographic data should be incorporated into the assessment of proficiency in echocardiography.