Assessment of surgical skills training: A call for quality improvement for educators in low- and middle-income countries

Abstract

We read with keen interest the article by Tom R. Okello and colleagues on the assessment of their final-year medical stu­dents after Essential Surgical Skills training.1 We commend the authors, the training institution, and their partners for their contributions to surgical training in the region.

In their article, the authors noted the need to evaluate the effectiveness of such training programmes in terms of skills acquisition and confidence among the trainees. Using a self-administered questionnaire, they demonstrated an improve­ment in the trainees’ pretraining and posttraining confidence in performing a variety of essential surgical skills. Whereas confidence is required for performing surgical procedures, it is also important to assess that the taught skills have actually been acquired by the trainees in the first place. However, no measure of the actual skills acquisition was undertaken. Self-reported assessments as used in this article tend to be subjec­tive and are prone to a number of biases. Moreover, there was no mention of the validity or reliability of the questionnaire used for assessment.