Physician assessment pilot study for the royal australasian college of physicians

Abstract

A random sample from the Fellowship of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians was invited to participate in the Physician Assessment (PA) trial, which is being considered as a component of the Maintenance of Professional Standards (MOPS) program. Each Fellow was asked to nominate 15 colleagues to be assessors and each assessor was sent a Physician Assessment Rating Form comprising 12 items on which to rate their clinical skills and humanistic qualities. Of the 452 Fellows in the sample, 245 (54.2%) agreed to participate and nominated an average of 14.8 raters. Rating forms were returned from 3285 raters (90.4%), representing a mean number of 13.4 forms for each physician. Of these, 3257 valid forms were used in the detailed analysis. Scores showed acceptable generalizability, and factor analysis grouped the 12 items into two clear factors representing clinical skills in one factor and humanistic qualities in the other. Implications of this study are discussed, including the views of those who did not participate in the trial.