Checklists for assessment and certification of clinical procedural skills omit essential competencies: a systematic review

Objective To develop generic criteria for the global assessment of clinical procedural competence and to quantify the extent to which existing checklists allow for holistic assessment of procedural competencies. Methods We carried out a systematic review and qualitative analysis of published clinical procedural skills assessment checklists and enumerated the contents of each. Source materials included all English‐language papers published from 1990 to June 2005, identified from 18 databases, which described or referred to an assessment document for any clinical procedural skill. A pair of reviewers identified key generic themes and sub‐themes through in‐depth analysis of a subset of 20 checklists with iterative agreement and independent retesting of a coding framework. The resulting framework was independently applied to all checklists by pairs of reviewers checking for the emergence of new themes and sub‐themes. Main outcome measures were identification of generic clinical procedural skills and the frequency of occurrence of each in the identified checklists. Results We identified 7 themes (‘Procedural competence’, represented in 85 [97%] checklists; ‘Preparation’, 65 [74%]; ‘Safety’, 45 [51%]; ‘Communication and working with the patient’, 32 [36%]; ‘Infection control’, 28 [32%]; ‘Post‐procedural care’, 24 [27%]; ‘Team working’, 13 [15%]) and 37 sub‐themes, which encapsulated all identified checklists. Of the sub‐themes, 2 were identified after the initial coding framework had been finalised. Conclusions It is possible to develop generic criteria for the global assessment of clinical procedural skills. A third and a half of checklists, respectively, do not enable explicit assessment of the key competencies ‘Infection control’ and ‘Safety’. Their assessment may be inconsistent in assessments which use such checklists.