Surgical EducationInternational assessment practices along the continuum of surgical training

- Competency-based education is the future of surgical training internationally.
- Experts opinions current and future directions of technical performance assessments.
- Assessing technical performance was deemed important during all stages of training.

BackgroundThe objectives of this study were to assemble an international perspective on (1) current, and (2) ideal technical performance assessment methods, and (3) barriers to their adoption during: selection, in-training, and certification.MethodsA questionnaire was distributed to international educational directorates.ResultsEight of 10 jurisdictions responded. Currently, aptitude tests or simulated tasks are used during selection, observational rating scales during training and nothing is used at certification. Ideally, innate ability should be determined during selection, in-training evaluation reports, and global rating scales used during training, whereas global and procedure-specific rating scales used at the time of certification. Barriers include lack of predictive evidence for use in selection, financial limitations during training, and a combination with respect to certification.ConclusionsIdentifying current and ideal evaluation methods will prove beneficial to ensure the best assessments of technical performance are chosen for each training time point.