Abstract
BackgroundDespite the recent widespread adoption of simulation in clinical education in physiotherapy, there is a lack of validated tools for assessment in this setting. The Assessment of Physiotherapy Practice (APP) is a comprehensive tool used in clinical placement settings in Australia to measure professional competence of physiotherapy students. The aim of the study was to evaluate the validity of the APP for student assessment in simulation settings.MethodsA total of 1260 APPs were collected, 971 from students in simulation and 289 from students in clinical placements. Rasch analysis was used to examine the construct validity of the APP tool in three different simulation assessment formats: longitudinal assessment over 1 week of simulation; longitudinal assessment over 2 weeks; and a short-form (25 min) assessment of a single simulation scenario. Comparison with APPs from 5 week clinical placements in hospital and clinic-based settings were also conducted.ResultsThe APP demonstrated acceptable fit to the expectations of the Rasch model for the 1 and 2 week clinical simulations, exhibiting unidimensional properties that were able to distinguish different levels of student performance. For the short-form simulation, nine of the 20 items recorded greater than 25 % of scores as ‘not-assessed’ by clinical educators which impacted on the suitability of the APP tool in this simulation format.ConclusionThe APP was a valid assessment tool when used in longitudinal simulation formats. A revised APP may be required for assessment in short-form simulation scenarios.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12909-016-0718-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
Despite the recent widespread adoption of simulation in clinical education in physiotherapy, there is a lack of validated tools for assessment in this setting
A recent systematic review of simulation-based assessments in health [14] found that the use of assessments in simulation settings are effective, the review highlighted that further research was needed if simulation was used as the only form of assessment
One week and 2 week longitudinal simulation assessments were collected from University A and included 147 and 181 Assessment of Physiotherapy Practice (APP) respectively
Summary
Despite the recent widespread adoption of simulation in clinical education in physiotherapy, there is a lack of validated tools for assessment in this setting. Simulation-based education and assessment has been an integral part of medical and nursing curricula for well over a decade [1, 2], with more recent adoption in physiotherapy and other allied health programs [3,4,5,6]. A recent systematic review of simulation-based assessments in health [14] found that the use of assessments in simulation settings are effective, the review highlighted that further research was needed if simulation was used as the only form of assessment. The review studies were predominantly from medicine, further highlighting the need for more research in physiotherapy and other health professions
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