A novel approach to assess clinical competence of postgraduate year 1 surgery residents

ABSTRACTBackground: An increased demand for accountability and transparency in medicine have initiated a shift toward a more objective and standardized approach for postgraduate medical training.Objective: To develop and evaluate an objective method to assess clinical competence of postgraduate year 1 surgery residents.Design: Thirty-one postgraduate year 1 surgery residents, who had been trained in the Surgical School of Peking University First Hospital for one year, participated in an objective structured clinical examination as a final assessment of their clinical competence. A test station of irregular wound repair (debridement and suture) was specially designed to test the residents’ surgical integrative competence in a complex-trauma treatment procedure. A modified global rating scale, in combination with wound area measurement, was applied to evaluate residents’ surgical performance. The validity of the subjective global rating scale was evaluated by the objective measurement results from the softw...