Evaluating Medical Student Clinical Skill Performance

Abstract

Second-year medical students (N = 187) evaluated their own videotaped performances of one of eight randomly assigned physical assessment examinations. The videotaped performance was one component of an introduction to clinical sciences course evaluation. Performance ratings were also obtained from two peers-one who served as the patient and the other who served as the camera person for the evaluation-and one expert. All rater groups used the same behaviorally anchored evaluation checklist of the key techniques and sequences identifiedfor each examination. High Pearsonproduct-moment correlations were obtained between (1) the two peer ratings for four of the examinations and (2) self andpeer ratings for the other four examinations. Repeated measures analysis of variance revealed significant differences among the four types of raters for all but one of the eight different examinations. Implications for future evaluation methodologies and curricular implementation of peer assessment are discussed.