Evaluating medical grand rounds.
BACKGROUND
Since January 2000, standard presenter evaluation forms have been made available to grand rounds organizers in the Department of Medicine, University of Toronto. During the 2000-2001 academic year, effort was directed at the accumulation of evidence for the validity of the results generated.


METHODS
Two issues were addressed: the integrity or coherence of the form itself and the number of forms or evaluations required to achieve a stable estimate of the construct "presenter effectiveness" for an individual presenter.


RESULTS
Positive evidence relating to the integrity of the form is presented and the number of evaluations or ratings required to provide a stable estimate of presenter effectiveness is suggested.


CONCLUSIONS
Most presenters' ratings were distributed in a narrow range. Ranking of individual presentations would require exceptionally high precision. Separation into groups requires less precision. This type of classification appears sufficient to enable planning decisions.
Rothman
Arthur I
AI
Department of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, UHN S-Wing, Suite 3-805, 190 Elizabeth Street, Toronto, ON M5G 2C4.
Sibbald
Gary
G
D000068:Accreditation; D002170:Canada; D004502:Education, Medical, Continuing; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D006801:Humans; D015203:Reproducibility of Results