Multisource Feedback Tool for the Assessment of Medical Student Clerks in Professionalism, Communication, and Collaboration Skills

Construct: This study investigates the validity of the Bahrain Defence Force instrument to assess professionalism, communication, and collaboration skills (BDF/PCC instrument) in medical graduates during their clerkship/intern years. Approach: The instrument to assess professionalism, communication, and collaboration skills [BDF/PCC instrument] was developed based on an extensive literature review, other existing valid instruments, and expert opinion. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to support the construct validity. Twenty-five interns engaged in a multisource feedback evaluation for this study. Each participant was rated by eight individuals from each of the following categories: physicians, nurses, and fellow interns. Cronbach’s α was used to determine the questionnaire’s internal consistency and reliability. Results: We report response rates (100 %), mean response time to complete each questionnaire (3.7 min), and the number of raters (seven to eight) needed to provide reliable results that support the feasibility of the survey. Reliability analysis using Cronbach’s α of internal consistency indicated that the full scale of the instrument had high internal consistency (Cronbach’s α 0.98). The instrument was found to be suitable for factor analysis (KMO = 0.941; Bartlett test significant, p < 0.001), which found that the data collected from the questionnaire could be grouped into three factors. These three factors represented 77.3 % of the total variance: professionalism, collaboration, and communication. The item-total correlation for this instrument was above 0.40 and showed homogeneity within each composite scale. The generalizability coefficients (Ep 2 ) were 0.79 for the surveys. Conclusion: The BDF/PCC instrument to assess professionalism, communication, and collaboration skills is a feasible, reliable, and valid tool to assess physicians in their clerkship year. Testing the instrument on two occasions with a 1-year interval and the confirmatory factor analysis provided some evidence to support the concurrent and the construct validity of the BDF/PCC instrument. © 2016, International Association of Medical Science Educators.