Development and Validity of a Simulation Program for Assessment of Clinical Teaching Skills

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Simulation-Based Assessment
• Pediatric Critical Care Medicine

Background:

• Teaching competence is crucial for intensivists, but assessing trainees' teaching skills is often overlooked.
• Simulation offers a practical and effective solution for evaluating and developing these skills.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a simulation-based assessment tool for clinical teaching skills.
• Focus on pediatric critical care medicine (CCM) trainees, nurses, and respiratory therapists.

Main Methods:

• Designed three teaching scenarios and one communication scenario based on literature review and expert consensus.
• Piloted scenarios and trained raters (faculty and trainees).
• Collected validity evidence across five domains: content, response processes, internal structure, relationship to other variables, and consequences.

Main Results:

• Assessment tools were user-friendly and captured key teaching characteristics.
• High internal consistency (Cronbach's α) and moderate rater agreement (interclass correlation) were observed.
• Moderate correlations between teaching and communication scores, and significant self-assessed learning gains were reported.

Conclusions:

• A three-station simulation program for assessing teaching skills in pediatric CCM was successfully developed.
• The collected validity evidence is moderate, confirming the program's effectiveness for training and feedback.