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Competency assessments
To the editor:
We read with interest the Commentary in the January 2014 issue of Orthopaedics Today Europe about standardizing training throughout Europe (Initiative will improve training for the next generation of orthopaedic surgeons).
At the University of Minnesota, we are working on competency assessments of surgical skills. Our big goal is to create a standards exam that applies to surgical skill potential/acquisition. Such exams have an ancient history (Chinese to British in India and so on), but have not been incorporated into medicine except in the written format often associated with board examination. Some have argued that surgical skill measurement is impossible. However, in the aviation industry (arguably similar to surgery where knowledge and mechanical skill must coexist to fly safely), flight trainers are accepted as dispassionate and valid measurements of skill acquisition and maintenance. In the context of distal radius fractures, we have been able to build a model that mechanically measures and discriminates skill acquisition. Our near future goals using this model include extending the same model to other orthopaedic centers in an effort to determine if the model can be generalized and using the same methods we used in building this model to build and test a lower extremity fracture model.
At this point we are interested in identifying like-minded orthopaedic teaching centers interested in collaborating. Interested parties are encouraged to contact us.
Joan E. Bechtold, PhD, Matthew D. Putman, MD, and Ann E. Van Heest, MD
Minneapolis, USA