Multiple Objective Measures of Skill (MOMS): a new approach to the assessment of technical ability in surgical trainees.
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.
Mackay
Sean
S
Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, St Mary's Hospital, Paddington, London, United Kingdom. s.mackay@ic.ac.uk
Datta
Vivek
V
Chang
Avril
A
Shah
Jyoti
J
Kneebone
Roger
R
Darzi
Ara
A
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