title: Multiple Objective Measures of Skill (MOMS): a new approach to the assessment of technical ability in surgical trainees.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The assessment of surgical technical skills has become an important topic in recent years. This study presents the validation of a 6-task skills examination for junior surgical trainees (at the level of the Membership of the Royal College of Surgeons).
  
  
  BACKGROUND
  Six tasks were evaluated in a project that also examined the feasibility of this method of assessment. The tasks were knowledge of sutures and instruments; knowledge of surgical devices; knot formation; skin-pad suturing, closure of an enterotomy; excision of a skin lesion; and laparoscopic manipulation. Comparisons were made between a group of junior trainees (n = 13), and a group of seniors (n = 8).
  
  
  RESULTS
  Each of the 6 tasks was able to be used to discriminate between the 2 groups. In all, there were 19 primary analyses across the 6 tasks, and 17 of these showed significant differences between the groups (P values ranging from 0.037 to < 0.001). There was generally a strong correlation between the analyses, and when a mean rank was calculated, the difference between groups was significant (P = 0.005 on Mann-Whitney U test; mean ranks 13.9 and 6.3 [of 21], for juniors and seniors respectively). Reliability of the 6-task assessment was very good at 0.70 (Cronbach's Alpha).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  A skills examination is a feasible and effective method of assessing the technical ability of basic surgical trainees.
authors.affiliation: Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, St Mary's Hospital, Paddington, London, United Kingdom. s.mackay@ic.ac.uk
authors.forename: Sean
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Mackay
authors.forename: Vivek
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Datta
authors.forename: Avril
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Chang
authors.forename: Jyoti
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Shah
authors.forename: Roger
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Kneebone
authors.forename: Ara
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Darzi
mesh_terms: D003196:Computer Graphics; D004503:Education, Medical, Graduate; D004521:Educational Measurement / Q000379:methods*; D005240:Feasibility Studies; D013502:General Surgery / Q000193:education*; D006801:Humans; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D013525:Surgical Instruments; D013536:Suture Techniques; D006113:United Kingdom