scholarly journals Evaluation of OSPE in Medical Laboratory Sciences Department: Post- Examinations Quality Metrics

Author(s):  
Amira Salem Alsagheer ◽  
Dania Waggas ◽  
Mohamed Hassanien

Introduction: Assessment plays a major role in improving the learning and teaching process. The practical examination has a key role in the assessment of students' competences. In conventional method, the judgment of students' performances is mainly subjective because the same performance of students is graded differently by different examiners. Successful implementation of OSPE deals with this major deficit of the conventional methods Assessing the assessment is very important because the implementation of OSPEs are very complex and resource intensive, as it needs large numbers of examiners, candidates and physical resources and equipment as well as time. Assurance of sufficient quality of OSPEs by a range of metrics that gives us critical view about the assessment process as a whole, rather than focusing on candidate outcomes only. Objectives of the study: The objectives of this study were To evaluate OSPEs conducted by Medical laboratory sciences department in Fakeeh College for Medical Sciences(FCMS) with regards to their quality metrics as an assessment tool. Results: A cross-sectional analytic study was conducted in Medical Laboratory Sciences Department Practical Examinations at FCMS Before OSPE conduction, the different stations were revised for criteria of content coverage, skills assessed, clarity of language, dominant domain assessed, and time allocated for each station. Post examinations quality metrics results showed that the reliability of the different examination in Medical Laboratory Sciences department ranged from 0.75 to 0.93 that mean good to excellent reliability. One OSPE showed that one or two stations didn't contribute to the overall all reliability of the whole exam. All OSPEs showed that there are good positive correlation between the theoretical and practical part of the course, and this come with the concurrent evidence of validity.

Assessment is an important component of education especially in the context of the learning and teaching environment. In higher education, assessment is the heart of formal education. Nowadays, technology plays an important role in the assessment process. Therefore, using technology development has an impact on improving the assessment system. Focus on the using of electronic assessment (e-assessment) systems is increasingly developing at the higher education level. Technological developments have led to a shift in concepts and ways of assessing moving from face-to-face assessment to digital-based assessment, namely an end-to-end assessment process using ICT. E-assessment system is provides many benefits for the effectiveness and efficiency of learning in higher education for lecturers, students and institutions. Many e-assessment models are developed to meet various objectives, especially in the purpose of educational learning. However, there are many challenges in its process and application. This paper aims to provide an example of e-assessment system application, describe challenges in the use of e-assessment systems in higher education based on literature, journals and research results and provide recommendations on how to deal with all of these challenges so that the assessment objectives can be achieved. The method that used is to figure out and describe qualitatively. Overall conclusion is the e-assessment system has become one of the requirements in higher education with many models. There are still many questions for lecturers, students and institutions that pose challenges in the application of e-assessments related to validity and reliability, accuracy, fairness, security, infrastructure and human resources. Based on this fact then the recommendation of these challenges in the successful implementation of e-assessment in higher education are paying attention to the characteristics of e-assessment, designing assessments according the needs, and creating a complete and accessible assessment system for all.


Author(s):  
Ranga Rao D. ◽  
Parameswari Babu U. ◽  
Kalyan Chakravarthy C. V. ◽  
Ramya N.

Background: Assessment drives the student learning. Regular periodical assessment not only improves learning habits, but also enhances the competence in all levels of medical education. Traditional practical examination is more subjective. It depends on examiners subjectivity, varying difficulty level of various experiments, and also internal marks variation etc. These flaws can be overcome by newer methods like OSPE. The aim of the study was to implement OSPE as a tool of internal assessment for practical skills in the II MBBS. To compare this with traditional practical examination (TPE). To obtain the students and faculty feedback regarding OSPE as a tool of assessment.Methods: A cross sectional study was carried out for 158 students in II internal pathology practical examination for six days in the second week of September 2016 at Department of Pathology, Dr. Pinnamaneni Siddhartha institute of medical sciences & Research Foundation, Chinnaoutpalli. Faculty and students were sensitized; blueprint were used to arrange twenty OSPE stations for the exercises conducted as per TPE and for the same 25 marks as per TPE. Simultaneously, all the students were subjected to both TPE and OSPE at the same time and venue. TPE was assessed by two professors and OSPE by separate eight faculty members independently without interaction with the students. The procedural stations were evaluated by using checklist and the response stations which consisted of short answers and MCQs, facilitated correction. Feedback was given to the student on their performance and feedback was obtained from the students and faculty regarding OSPE by questionnaire with Yes/No answers.Results: Performance score of students in OPSE (13.73 ±2.49) was higher as compared to TPE (9.27±1.86) which was statistically significant. Based on the response to the questionnaire, students perception towards OSPE was analyzed. Majority strongly agree OSPE to be fairer, more transparent and objective in comparison to TPE. In contrast, all the faculty members unanimously opined that OSPE was difficult to arrange, time taken and faculty versus students ratio was high for evaluation. Though, the faculty (91%) overall opined that OSPE should be included as a method of assessment.Conclusions: Present study revealed that OSPE was acceptable, feasible and reliable to the students as well as for faculty for the internal assessment in pathology. Opinions of both students and faculties strongly agreed that OPSE is more effective objective assessment tool.


Author(s):  
Archana Carolin ◽  
Prathyusha Tirupati Venkata Devi

Background: Assessment of students in medical colleges was done by traditional practical examination for evaluation of practical or clinical skills, which is subjective in nature and suffer from lack of objectivity. So a uniform system of clinical and practical evaluation of medical students is always desirable. An objective structured practical examination (OSPE) is one such method believed to meet the deficiencies of the conventional system of practical/clinical examination. This study is an attempt to evaluate the effectiveness of OSPE as a formative assessment tool compared to traditional methods for M.B.B.S. students.Methods: A cross sectional comparative study was carried out on 56 MBBS students in KAMSRC, Hyderabad, Telangana. Students of 3rd year M.B.B.S were subjected to traditional practical evaluation followed by OSPE. A eight station OSPE was conducted one week after the TPE. The scores obtained in both were compared. All the data collected was entered and analyzed with MS excel software 2007.Results: Average marks scored by the students in OSPE (17.78±2.69) were higher as compared to traditional practical examination (15.00±3.49) which was statistically significant. 74.4% of the students strongly agreed that OSPE is fairer in comparison to traditional practical examination. 90.5% students strongly agreed that variability of examiner and patient can be removed to a large extent by OSPE.Conclusions: Based on the observation, OSPE was found to be a more effective assessment tool than traditional method.


2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-15
Author(s):  
Fahmida Zabin ◽  
Soofia Khatoon ◽  
Md Humayun Kabir Talukder

Assessment plays a major role in the process of medical education. The clinical examination plays a key role in the assessment of students' competence to practice medicine. The conventional method of assessment does not include the assessment of clinical psychomotor skill, which students are learning throughout their clinical postings .The judgement of students performances is purely subjective and the same performance is graded differently by different examiners. A major advances in this area has been the formulation of an objective structured clinical/practical examination (OSCE/OSCE), which has been implemented successfully. The objectives of this study were to evaluate OSPE in FCPS part II exam in Obs and Gynae conducted by Bangladesh College of Physicians and Surgeons (BCPS) in terms of exploration of quality of assessment tools as well as the opinion of the students and the examiners regarding OSPE. A cross-sectional observational study was conducted among 150 students appearing in FCPS part II examination in Obs and Gynae of Bangladesh College of Physicians and Surgeons . Among the examiners 30 were included in the study. Study instrument consisted of two sets of self- administered questionnaires, one for the students and one for the examiners. Attitudes of students and examiners were collected by a grading scale (Likert scale). Different stations were analyzed by criteria of content coverage, skills assessed, clarity of languages, dominant domain assessed and time allocated for the task. By analyzing the results of three sessions it shows that the percentage of pass varies from ten to fourteen percent .The overall opinion regarding OSPE shows that 54 percent of the students strongly agreed that this assessment system is a comprehensive one. About thirty seven percent and forty percent of students agreed on that it can assess wide range of knowledge and clinical competencies respectively .However student felt that clinical competencies respectively .However student felt that it was a strong anxiety producing experience. And concerns were expressed regarding the ambiguity of some questions and inadequacy of time for expected tasks in some stations. The majority of the students felt they were well oriented about the exam and that the required tasks were consistent with the actual curriculum that they were taught. Ninety percent of examiners strongly agreed that it is a comprehensive system of assessment. Majority strongly agreed that it's a useful method of identifying gaps and weaknesses in competencies. About seventy percent agreed that checklists were well prepared. But forty percent had the opinion that there was some ambiguity of languages and ambiguity of instructions. OSPE quality evaluation showed coverage of content was adequate. Most of the domain assessed was psychomotor domain. In conclusion, both students and examiners agreed that the assessment was comprehensive and it was an objective and fair process. Overall opinions suggested that OSPE were restrictive, non discriminative and simplistic. The very nature of OSPE made it different from the traditional method. It was very much comprehensive and valid, covers a wide range of contents including practical skills.Bangladesh Journal of Medical Education Vol.4(1) 2013: 8-15


2020 ◽  
Vol 90 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 535-552 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mahdieh Abbasalizad Farhangi ◽  
Mahdi Vajdi

Abstract. Backgrounds: Central obesity, as a pivotal component of metabolic syndrome is associated with numerous co-morbidities. Dietary factors influence central obesity by increased inflammatory status. However, recent studies didn’t evaluate the association between central obesity and dietary inflammation index (DII®) that give score to dietary factors according to their inflammatory potential. In the current systematic review and meta-analysis, we summarized the studies that investigated the association between DII® with central obesity indices in the general populations. Methods: In a systematic search from PubMed, SCOPUS, Web of Sciences and Cochrane electronic databases, we collected relevant studies written in English and published until 30 October 2019. The population of included studies were apparently healthy subjects or individuals with obesity or obesity-related diseases. Observational studies that evaluated the association between DII® and indices of central obesity including WC or WHR were included. Results: Totally thirty-two studies were included; thirty studies were cross-sectional and two were cohort studies with 103071 participants. Meta-analysis of observational studies showed that higher DII® scores were associated with 1.81 cm increase in WC (Pooled weighted mean difference (WMD) = 1.813; CI: 0.785–2.841; p = 0.001). Also, a non-significant increase in the odds of having higher WC (OR = 1.162; CI: 0.95–1.43; p = 0.154) in the highest DII category was also observed. In subgroup analysis, the continent, dietary assessment tool and gender were the heterogeneity sources. Conclusion: The findings proposed that adherence to diets with high DII® scores was associated with increased WC. Further studies with interventional designs are necessary to elucidate the causality inference between DII® and central obesity indices.


Author(s):  
Robekhah Harun ◽  
Zetty Harisha Harun ◽  
Laura Christ Dass

The increase in student enrolment and the need  to cater to students of diverse backgrounds have led to the adoption of blended learning in many higher learning institutions. Blended learning, which allows both face to face interaction and on-line delivery, has been adopted into many curricula. One such institution is University Technology MARA which is slowly introducing features of blended learning in its course syllabus beginning with practice to online assessments. However, to ensure successful implementation of blended learning as part of the curricula, there are several aspects for consideration such as learner and teacher readiness for blended learning. This paper examines issues regarding the use of blended learning as a delivery method at UiTM Kedah . The discussion in this paper focuses on learner’ readiness and perceptions of the blended learning environment. The data collected for this study are responses from learners to a questionnaire survey. The research findings form the basis for recommendations for the development of learning and teaching practices using blended learning approaches to enhance learners' learning experiences.  


Author(s):  
Zuzhen Ji ◽  
Dirk Pons ◽  
John Pearse

Successful implementation of Health and Safety (H&S) systems requires an effective mechanism to assess risk. Existing methods focus primarily on measuring the safety aspect; the risk of an accident is determined based on the product of severity of consequence and likelihood of the incident arising. The health component, i.e., chronic harm, is more difficult to assess. Partially, this is due to both consequences and the likelihood of health issues, which may be indeterminate. There is a need to develop a quantitative risk measurement for H&S risk management and with better representation for chronic health issues. The present paper has approached this from a different direction, by adopting a public health perspective of quality of life. We have then changed the risk assessment process to accommodate this. This was then applied to a case study. The case study showed that merely including the chronic harm scales appeared to be sufficient to elicit a more detailed consideration of hazards for chronic harm. This suggests that people are not insensitive to chronic harm hazards, but benefit from having a framework in which to communicate them. A method has been devised to harmonize safety and harm risk assessments. The result was a comprehensive risk assessment method with consideration of safety accidents and chronic health issues. This has the potential to benefit industry by making chronic harm more visible and hence more preventable.


BMJ Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. e045550
Author(s):  
Zhigang Zhang ◽  
Guoqiang Wang ◽  
Yuchen Wu ◽  
Jin Guo ◽  
Nannan Ding ◽  
...  

PurposeTo translate and adapt the Chelsea Critical Care Physical Assessment Tool (CPAx) into Chinese version (‘CPAx-Chi’), test the reliability and validity of CPAx-Chi, and verify the cut-off point for the diagnosis of intensive care unit-acquired weakness (ICU-AW).Study designCross-sectional observational study.MethodsForward and back translation, cross-cultural adaptation and pretesting of CPAx into CPAx-Chi were based on the Brislin model. Participants were recruited from the general ICU of five third-grade class-A hospitals in western China. Two hundred critically ill adult patients (median age: 53 years; 64% men) with duration of ICU stay ≥48 hours and Glasgow Coma Scale ≥11 were included in this study. Two researchers simultaneously and independently assessed eligible patients using the Medical Research Council Muscle Score (MRC-Score) and CPAx-Chi.ResultsThe content validity index of items was 0.889. The content validity index of scale was 0.955. Taking the MRC-Score scale as standard, the criterion validity of CPAx-Chi was r=0.758 (p<0.001) for researcher A, and r=0.65 (p<0.001) for researcher B. Cronbach’s α was 0.939. The inter-rater reliability was 0.902 (p<0.001). The area under the receiver operating characteristic curves of CPAx-Chi for diagnosing ICU-AW based on MRC-Score ≤48 were 0.899 (95% CI 0.862 to 1.025) and 0.874 (95% CI 0.824 to 0.925) for researcher B. The best cut-off point for CPAx-Chi for the diagnosis of ICU-AW was 31.5. The sensitivity was 87% and specificity was 77% for researcher A, whereas it was 0.621, 31.5, 75% and 87% for researcher B, respectively. The consistency was high when taking CPAx-Chi ≤31 and MRC-Score ≤48 as the cut-off points for the diagnosis of ICU-AW. Cohen’s kappa=0.845 (p=0.02) in researcher A and 0.839 (p=0.04) for researcher B.ConclusionsCPAx-Chi demonstrated content validity, criterion-related validity and reliability. CPAx-Chi showed the best accuracy in assessment of patients at risk of ICU-AW with good sensitivity and specificity at a recommended cut-off of 31.


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ning An ◽  
Ji Sheng Lin ◽  
Qi Fei

Abstract Background To compare the validation of four tools for identifying painful new osteoporotic vertebral compression fractures (PNOVCFs) in older Chinese men: bone mineral density (BMD), Asian osteoporosis self-assessment tool (OSTA), World Health Organization fracture risk assessment tool (FRAX) (without BMD) and Beijing Friendship Hospital Osteoporosis Self-Assessment Tool (BFH-OSTM). Methods A cross sectional study was conducted from 2013 to 2019. A total of 846 men aged ≥50 were included and were divided into two groups: Fracture Group (patients with PNOVCFs underwent percutaneous vertebroplasty surgery) and Non-Fracture Group (community dwelled subjects for healthy examination). All subjects accepted a dual-energy X-ray BMD test and a structured questionnaire. The results of BMD, OSTA, FRAX and BFH-OSTM scores were assessed and receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curves were generated to compare the validity of four tools for identifying PNOVCFs. Optimal cutoff points, sensitivity, specificity, and areas under the ROC curves (AUCs) were determined. Results There were significant differences including BMD T score (femoral neck, total hip and L1-L4), OSTA, FRAX and BFH-OSTM scores between Fracture group and Non-fracture group. Compared to BMD and OSTA, BFH-OSTM and FRAX had better predictive value, the sensitivity, specificity and AUC value are 0.841, 81.29%, 70.67% and 0.796, 74.85%, 78.52%, respectively. Compared with FRAX, the BFH-OSTM has a better AUC value. Conclusions Both BFH-OSTM and FRAX can be used to identify POVCFs, However, BFH-OSTM model may be a more simple and effective tool to identify the risk of POVCFs in Chinese elderly men.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Kwuntida Uthaisar Kotepui ◽  
Manas Kotepui ◽  
Chuchard Punsawad

Malaria is a potential medical emergency and should be treated immediately because delays in diagnosis and treatment are the leading causes of death in many countries. This study aimed to assess the knowledge, attitude, and practice related to malaria diagnosis for early detection among healthcare workers in the laboratories of hospitals in Thailand. The design of the study was a descriptive cross-sectional study carried out between January 2016 and March 2017 at 11 hospitals in Thailand. The interviewees included any scientists who were currently working in a medical laboratory. Mean scores for knowledge, attitude, and practice for each healthcare group were calculated and compared between groups. Data analysis was performed using the SPSS version 11.5 software package (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA). Among a total of 118 healthcare workers, most of the healthcare workers had fair to good knowledge, attitude, and practice related to malaria detection. Among the various positions of healthcare workers, medical technologists possessed a greater knowledge on malaria detection than medical technician assistants or laboratory assistants (X2 = 9.822, d.f. = 2, and P value=0.007). This study infers that knowledge, attitude, and practice related to malaria detection among healthcare workers in laboratories were adequate. However, some points of knowledge and practice must be updated. There is a very urgent need to update knowledge on malaria, especially about the number of Plasmodium species causing relapse in malaria patients. In addition, there is an urgent need to update the practice related to malaria detection, especially about the staining process for early detection of malaria.


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