Avoid reinventing the wheel: implementation of the Ottawa Clinic Assessment Tool (OCAT) in Internal Medicine

BACKGROUND: Workplace based assessment (WBA) is crucial to competency-based education. The majority of healthcare is delivered in the ambulatory setting making the ability to run an entire clinic a crucial core competency for Internal Medicine (IM) trainees. Current WBA tools used in IM do not allow a thorough assessment of this skill. Further, most tools are not aligned with the way clinical assessors conceptualize performances. To address this, many tools aligned with entrustment decisions have recently been published. The Ottawa Clinic Assessment Tool (OCAT) is an entrustment-aligned tool that allows for such an assessment but was developed in the surgical setting and it is not known if it can perform well in an entirely different context. The aim of this study was to implement the OCAT in an IM program and collect psychometric data in this different setting. Using one tool across multiple contexts may reduce the need for tool development and ensure that tools used have proper psychometric data to support them. METHODS: Psychometrics characteristics were determined. Descriptive statistics and effect sizes were calculated. Scores were compared between levels of training (juniors (PGY1), seniors (PGY2s and PGY3s) & fellows (PGY4s and PGY5s)) using a one-way ANOVA. Safety for independent practice was analyzed with a dichotomous score. Variance components were generated and used to estimate the reliability of the OCAT. RESULTS: Three hundred ninety OCATs were completed over 52 weeks by 86 physicians assessing 44 residents. The range of ratings varied from 2 (I had to talk them through) to 5 (I did not need to be there) for most items. Mean scores differed significantly by training level (p < .001) with juniors having lower ratings (M = 3.80 (out of 5), SD = 0.49) than seniors (M = 4.22, SD = − 0.47) who had lower ratings than fellows (4.70, SD = 0.36). Trainees deemed safe to run the clinic independently had significantly higher mean scores than those deemed not safe (p < .001). The generalizability coefficient that corresponds to internal consistency is 0.92. CONCLUSIONS: This study’s psychometric data demonstrates that we can reliably use the OCAT in IM. We support assessing existing tools within different contexts rather than continuous developing discipline-specific instruments. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12909-018-1327-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.