Development of a new valid and reliable microsurgical skill assessment scale for ophthalmology residents

Zhihua Zhang, Minwen Zhou, Kun Liu, Bijun Zhu, Haiyun Liu, Xiaodong Sun, Xun Xu

More and more concerns have been arisen about the ability of new medical graduates to meet the demands of today's practice environment. In this study, we wanted to develop a valid, reliable and standardized assessment tool for evaluating the basic microsurgical skills of residents in a microsurgery laboratory, to get them well prepared before entering the surgical realm of ophthalmology. Twenty-three experts who have teaching experience reviewed the assessment scale. Constructive comments were incorporated to ensure face and content validity. Twenty-one attendings from different specialties then graded eight corneal rupture suturing videos with the scale to investigate interrater reliability. Fourteen of them graded the same videos 3 months later to investigate intrarater reliability (repeatability). A total of 280 assessment scales were completed. All the ICC values of interrater reliability were greater than 0.8 with 75% data greater than 0.9 (range 0.860-0.976). All the ICC values of intrarater reliability (repeatability) were also greater than 0.8 with 63% data greater than 0.9 (range 0.833-0.954). The assessment scale we developed is valid and reliable. This tool could be useful to ensure that junior residents achieve a certain level of microsurgical technique in a laboratory environment before training in the operation room. Hopefully, this tool will provide a structured template for other residency programs to assess their residents for basic microsurgical skills.