Assessment of teamwork skills of medical students using absolute and relative criteria

Abstract

INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES: Teamwork is an essential professional attribute of medical professionals which has demonstrated to be directly contributing to improve patient care and safety. The assessment of teamwork ability of medical undergraduates is vital to foster this skill. Peers appear to be an effective source for the assessment. METHODS: This study attempted to develop a peer assessment for assessing teamwork ability of students validly and reliably using the team-based research projects adopted by the Faculty of Medicine, University of Kelaniya. In complying with the literature, the assessment focused on communication, participation, involvement, support, commitment and leadership. Each student scored self and peers (5 or 6) in their group on two scoring systems; absolute (allocation of absolute mark for each peer in the group), and relative (marking the peers relative to self). RESULTS: Out of 164 recruits, 128 completed the assessment accurately. The following observations were statistically significant: poor correlation (Pearson < 0.4) between self and peer scores for both domain and overall assessment levels with either absolute or relative marking; and high correlation (Pearson > 0.6) between absolute and relative scores given by peers. The variability of relative scores, however, was higher than the absolute scores. CONCLUSIONS: A peer assessment tool with a limited number of items and assessment of peers relative to oneself produced credible and discriminatory information about the teamwork skills of medical students. Its use for summative purposes is yet to be determined.