The use of skills inventories to assess and grade practice: Part 2 – Evaluation of assessment strategy

This paper evaluates the introduction of an assessment tool to grade clinical competence in post-registration critical care courses using a skills-based assessment strategy. An audit of skills assessors was conducted alongside an analysis of theory and practice marks. Findings showed marks awarded for practice were generally higher than those awarded for theory which may be expected in a clinically-based profession. Whilst grading of practice requires further exploration, our experience shows that competence can be defined, measured and the resultant marks incorporated into a degree classification with relative ease. Consistency between assessors remains an issue but can be assisted by the use of clear skills templates and a user-friendly grading tool.