DOPS (Direct Observation of Procedural Skills) in undergraduate skills-lab: Does it work? Analysis of skills-performance and curricular side effects

Objective: Sufficient teaching and assessing clinical skills in the undergraduate setting becomes more and more important. In a surgical skills-lab course at the Medical University of Innsbruck fourth year students were teached with DOPS (direct observation of procedural skills). We analyzed whether DOPS worked or not in this setting, which performance levels could be reached compared to tutor teaching (one tutor, 5 students) and which curricular side effects could be observed.Methods: In a prospective randomized trial in summer 2013 (April – June) four competence-level-based skills were teached in small groups during one week: surgical abdominal examination, urethral catheterization (phantom), rectal-digital examination (phantom), handling of central venous catheters. Group A was teached with DOPS, group B with a classical tutor system. Both groups underwent an OSCE (objective structured clinical examination) for assessment. 193 students were included in the study. Altogether 756 OSCE´s were carried out, 209 (27,6%) in the DOPS- and 547 (72,3%) in the tutor-group.Results: Both groups reached high performance levels. In the first month there was a statistically significant difference (p