Observational Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2020. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Mar 21, 2020; 26(11): 1221-1230
Published online Mar 21, 2020. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v26.i11.1221
Subtle skills: Using objective structured clinical examinations to assess gastroenterology fellow performance in system based practice milestones
Marianna Papademetriou, Gabriel Perrault, Max Pitman, Colleen Gillespie, Sondra Zabar, Elizabeth Weinshel, Renee Williams
Marianna Papademetriou, Division of Gastroenterology, Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, DC 20007, United States
Marianna Papademetriou, Division of Gastroenterology, Washington DC VA Medical Center, Washington, DC 20422, United States
Gabriel Perrault, Department of Medicine, New York University Medical Center, New York, NY 10016, United States
Max Pitman, Renee Williams, Division of Gastroenterology, New York University Medical Center, New York, NY 10016, United States
Colleen Gillespie, Sondra Zabar, Department of Medicine, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY 10016, United States
Elizabeth Weinshel, Department of Gastroenterology, VA New York Harbor Healthcare System, New York, NY 10010, United States
Author contributions: Papademetriou M, Pitman M, Williams R and Weinshel E wrote and developed content for the Objective Structured Clinical Exam; Gillespie C, Zabar S and Weinshel E served as content experts who reviewed checklists, exam content, scripts and helped coordinate and execution of the Objective Structured Clinical Examinations; Williams R collected and summarized the data. All authors contributed in the writing and editing of the final manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: This program was considered an educational performance improvement project by the New York University School of Medicine Institutional Review Board and was not considered for IRB approval. IRB submission and approval was not required.
Informed consent statement: This program was considered an educational performance improvement project by the New York University School of Medicine Institutional Review Board. Participation in the program was voluntary. Informed consent to participate was not required.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors have no potential conflicts of interest to disclose.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
STROBE statement: Authors have read the STROBE Statement-checklist of items and the manuscript was prepared and revised accordingly.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Marianna Papademetriou, MD, Assistant Professor, Division of Gastroenterology, Washington DC VA Medical Center, 50 Irving Street NW, Washington, DC 20422, United States. marianna.papademetriou@va.gov
Received: December 5, 2019
Peer-review started: December 5, 2019
First decision: January 16, 2020
Revised: February 10, 2020
Accepted: March 5, 2020
Article in press: March 5, 2020
Published online: March 21, 2020
Core Tip

Core tip: In United States medical training, system based practice (SBP) milestones are often considered the most difficult to both teach and assess. While the objective standardized clinical examination is a well validated method for assessment in medical education, its use for assessment of specific SBP milestones has not been well studied. In this observational study, we created and implemented objective standardized clinical examinations geared towards assessment of SBP milestones in gastroenterology fellows in scenarios engineered to provide opportunity for medical error. We show that this method provides objective assessment of trainees for program use and may help trainees feel more prepared for real world situations.