The structured objective clinical evaluation from the area of general medical training

Abstract

Introduction: For a few years, education has witnessed changes in training. We try to go from a training based on the passive acquisition of theoretical knowledge to another more active, dynamic and reflective formation. The ideal way to assess professional ability is to observe what the doctor does in the usual situations in his or her practice. As this involves great technical difficulties, instruments that closely approximate reality have been designed, such as Structured Objective Clinical Evaluation.
 

Objective: The objective was to apply a structured objective clinical evaluation to assess the clinical skills of fifth-semester students.
 

Method: A test committee was formed by four teachers from the general medical training area. A table of specifications of clinical skills was made to evaluate students with planned clinical cases, including anamnesis, physical examination, clinical judgment, anatophysiological diagnosis, imaging skills and therapeutic communication. Four stations were designed, their content was validated through expert judgment and the predictive validity of the checklists was calculated. The test was applied to 17 students, the instrument was validated, results of the descriptive statistics were obtained and the Cronbach’s alpha was calculated.
 

Results: The analysis of agreement of the evaluation instrument according to the experts was acceptable because the condition of essential exceeded 80%; Predictive validity and Cronbach’s alpha in three of the stations was significant, chagasic heart disease was the best evaluated with 97.5 and the general Cronbach’s alpha was 0.507.
 

Conclusions: The instruments used in structured objective clinical evaluation have sufficient validity and reliability to be applied in the research context and improve the quality of clinical evaluations, making them more objective and with greater possibilities of feedback in the learning process.