Assessing colposcopic skills: the instructor's handbook

In the United States, 93% of family practice residency programs teach colposcopy. Training should ideally include didactic teaching of basic knowledge, followed by practice on models and then supervised teaching with patients. Although various curricula have been published that outline basic principles of colposcopy education, methods of determining clinical competency among resident physicians are lacking. Methods of assessing psychomotor are cognitive skills in colposcopy are available for instructors, including the use of preclinical cervical practice models for colposcopic biopsy and endocervical curettage, visual skills tests that use images of colposcopic findings, colposcopy CD-ROMs, written pretest and posttest knowledge assessment instruments, and procedural checklists. Specific parameters for many of these tools can be used to define clinical competency in colposcopy.