Designing an Instrument to Assess Clinical Abilities of Undergraduated Physicians in Nosocomial Infections

Abstract

Background: clinical skills are the ability to confront and solve clinical problems, therefore the importance to evaluate undergraduate physicians, because they are part of the process to prevent and control Nosocomial Infections (NI). The objective of this study was to design an instrument to evaluate clinical skills in undergraduate physicians in the management of nosocomial infections. Material and methods: design test-retest. An instrument designed with real clinical cases, where there were assessed several indicators: risk factors, diagnosis integration, iatrogenic omission, iatrogenic commission, actions criticism, prevention and clinic studies. The answer options were: false, true and do not know, and experts validated responses. Unexplained random responses were obtained by the Perez-Padilla and Viniegra formula; internal consistence was evaluated by the Kuder-Richardson 20 formula and it was applied at the beginning and at the end of the undergraduate physicians. The Wilcoxon test was used to compare the initial and final tests. Results: the Kuder- Richardson 20 test was 0.9651 and the Perez-Padilla and Viniegra were 20. The clinical skill was higher at the end of the internship. Some differences were found in the risk factors indicators, diagnosis integration, and iatrogenic commission, actions criticism and prevention. These differences were not shown in clinic studies and iatrogenic omission. Conclusions: the instrument used has high internal consistency and low probability for random answers. There is a development in the clinic ability that comes from the experience of clinic practice. There will be achieved higher levels with educative interventions aimed at developing knowledge.