Workplace based assessment by Direct Observation of procedural skills for postgraduate students in Obstetrics and Gynaecology

Introduction: Structured workplace based assessment in PG curriculum is the need of the hour. This project addresses the same. This study was conducted to assess procedural skill of postgraduate students by using a novel tool-Direct Observation of Procedural skills (DOPS) and impact on learning by reassessment. Methodology: Seven second year postgraduate students and eight faculty members participated in the study. First DOPS cycle was conducted over 6 weeks for 5 basic procedures in Obstetrics and Gynecology (OBGY). The checklists of procedures were shared. Second DOPS cycle was conducted by same faculty. At the end, feedback about the entire process was collected and analyzed. Results: All the students showed improvement in DOPS scores during second session. The component task wise score analysis showed statistically significant improvement in following areas such as maintenance of asepsis, pre procedure preparations, demonstration of anatomy and indications, communication with patient, post procedure management and overall tissue handling. This was evident when ‘paired t test’ was applied to the data. Analysis of feedback showed acceptability, feasibility and relevance of DOPS in OBGY. Conclusion: We found that DOPS is highly acceptable assessment tool by both the postgraduate students and faculty. It helped students to identify gaps in learning and achieve improvement in skills.