University of Minnesota Medical School
Background:
The American Association of Medical Colleges deemed performing lifesaving procedures such as airway management a medical student competency for transitioning to residency. Anesthesiology clerkships provide the unique opportunity for medical students to practice these procedures in the safe and controlled operating room environment. Given limitation of practicing procedures in simulation centers, we aim to validate a Checklist we developed for use in the clinical setting where medical students perform the steps of safely inducing general anesthesia with endotracheal intubation.
Methods:
We validated the Checklist by aligning the Checklist with our clerkship objectives, modified it based on feedback and after trialing it. Using paired t-tests, we calculated pre- and post-clerkship Checklist scores to determine curriculum efficacy. The baseline Checklist was done at a simulation center, whereas the post-clerkship Checklist was performed in the clinical setting. The P value of <0.05 was determined to be statistically significant. We examined agreement between overall scores with intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC).
Results:
Fourteen medical students participated in the study. The ICC for agreement was 0.881 (95% CI: 0.357, 0.969) and ICC for consistency was 0.934 (95% CI: 0.807, 0.978). There was a statistically significant improvement in the score from baseline to final evaluation of 3.9 points (95% CI: 2.5, 5.2; p<0.001).
Conclusions:
We validated our Checklist. The statically significant change in Checklist scores suggests that our medical students gained knowledge and experience performing procedures during the clerkship and were able to demonstrate it during the Checklist assessment in a clinical environment. The Checklist may be used as an objective measure for medical students to achieve competency.
