title: Development of a Tool to Assess the Team Leadership Skills of Medical Residents.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To develop a tool to assess the team leadership skills of internal medicine residents.
  
  
  METHODS
  A 27-item pilot instrument developed by two authors was distributed to interns on ward and intensive care unit teams at the end of rotations from a single institution's internal medicine residency program. These items were factor analyzed and reduced to a seven-item resident leadership scale (RLS). Validity of the instrument was assessed by comparing the rating on the RLS to scores on a validated measure of teaching skills provided at the same time and by the program director's global rating of team leadership skill for each resident at the completion of data collection.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The three principal components from the factor analysis explained 82 percent of the variance. By introspection we reduced the scale to the final 7-item RLS that had a Cronbach alpha reliability estimate of 0.95. 490 ratings on 134 individual residents were available for analysis. The RLS scores correlated highly with both the validated measure of teaching skill and the program director's ratings.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The RLS has robust psychometric properties. It may provide a useful tool for a broader assessment of trainee skill if validated in other settings.
authors.affiliation: a Section of General Internal Medicine and Clinical Epidemiology, VA Boston Healthcare System, Boston Division, Evans Department of Medicine , Boston University School of Medicine , Boston , MA , USA.
authors.forename: Jay D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Orlander
authors.affiliation: b Section of General Internal Medicine, Seattle VA Puget Sound Health Care System , University of Washington School of Medicine , Seattle , WA , USA.
authors.forename: Joyce E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Wipf
authors.affiliation: c MAVERIC, VA Boston Healthcare System, Boston Division , Boston University School of Public Health , Boston , MA , USA.
authors.forename: Robert A
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Lew
keywords: assessment; graduate medical education,; leadership,; management,