Evaluation of physicians' professional performance: an iterative development and validation study of multisource...

Area of Science:

• Medical education research
• Healthcare quality improvement
• Physician performance assessment

Background:

• Global demand for evaluating physician performance in clinical practice.
• Need for validated and reliable assessment instruments.
• Focus on multisource feedback (MSF) for physician evaluation.

Purpose of the Study:

• Assess reliability and validity of three MSF instruments.
• Investigate sociodemographic biasing factors.
• Examine self-other evaluation associations and required number of evaluations for reliable physician assessment.

Main Methods:

• Observational validation study in 26 Dutch non-academic hospitals.
• 146 hospital-based physicians evaluated by peers, co-workers, and patients.
• Self-evaluations completed by physicians; data analyzed using classical test theory and correlation analyses.

Main Results:

• MSF instruments demonstrated high internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha 0.95-0.96).
• Biasing factors accounted for only 2% of rating variance.
• Peer, co-worker, and patient ratings were correlated, but not with self-ratings.

Conclusions:

• The three MSF instruments provide reliable and valid data for physician performance evaluation in the Netherlands.
• Self-evaluations did not correlate with external ratings.
• Future research should explore performance improvement through MSF utilization.