Journal of Clinical and Diagnostic Research. 2019 Jan, Vol-13(1): JC01-JC06 1 1 DOI: 10.7860/JCDR/2019/37703.12424 Original Article Education Section Validity and Reliability of Physiotherapy Student Clinical Assessment Tool to Analyse Students’ Clinical Performance INTRODUCTION In medical and health science professional field, interacting with patients is of utmost importance. Therefore assessing the competency of such skill is an important task to be achieved by CIs [1]. Clinical posting in physiotherapy study provides opportunities for students to explore the various skills needed for the practice, which is enhanced with proper guidance by the educators [2-6]. In order to improve student’s clinical competence level, standard clinical assessment tool is required to measure their competence [2,7,8]. A clinical assessment tool will be more valuable when it considers the point of view of the students as well as the CI [9]. When the importance of a tool is not understood by clinical instructors then Clinical Assessment Tool (CAT) may not be very meaningful or if it is not very user-friendly, it may not be productive. The effect of clinical instruction can be assessed by an objective marking of clinical performance is required which may be similar tool as academic final examination in all universities, college and school [10,11]. Clinical assessment tool allows students to gain knowledge by reflecting on themselves whether they are actually competent or not [12]. Clinical educators teach a lot of skills in the clinical practice but, to know students’ applicability of it can only be confirmed if they are able to assess the student with a tool. Furthermore, a good physiotherapist should not only excel in technical but also in non-technical skills [13]. Therefore, a standard for student clinical assessment tool should include all the basic of non-technical skills as well as technical skills and the competence of physiotherapy students [13,14]. The following are the seven important qualities that should be implemented by any healthcare professionals, including physiotherapy, which of those are Professional Behaviour, Assessment, Clinical Reasoning, Intervention, Risk Management, Communication Skills and Teamwork. Professional behaviour defined as good attitude of the professionalism itself includes good emotional control, self-development, accountability, motivation and respect patient’s cultural behaviour needed to make patient able to cooperate comfortably in treatment [3,10,15]. The components in a collaborative clinical reasoning are essential for a safe and quality practice, therefore, such qualities are of prime importance to analyse [10,16-18]. Therefore, there are various factors that should be considered when developing a clinical assessment tool such as rating method and important components according to its role in physiotherapy [7,19]. Competency of students is a concern in universities offering physiotherapy course, here its noteworthy to mention that there is no “gold standard” instrument for measuring physiotherapy students’ clinical competence and performance. Many universities have developed their own assessment tool to assess their students that only conforming to their course learning outcome [3,8,10,20,21]. Each of these different tools has their own weakness and benefits. It is imperative that the clinical and academic institutions establish various levels of ongoing support for both students and clinical instructors in the process of clinical assessment [22]. Till date, there are few clinical assessment tools that had been used across different countries such as the American Physical Therapist Clinical Performance Instrument (PT CPI), Canadian Physiotherapy Assessment of Clinical Performance (ACP), Assessment of Physiotherapy Practice (APP) from Australia, Clinical Competency Evaluation Instrument (CCEVI) from UKM, Malaysia and Common Assessment Form (CAF) from Irish [2,3,15,21]. However, each different assessment tool has its different strengths and weaknesses. Therefore, there is no “gold standard” for physiotherapy student when it comes to clinical assessment tool available to assess them. MANISHA P SHENOY 1 , LIAU VIVIAN 2 Keywords: Clinical competency, Clinical placement, Clinical skill, Physiotherapy ABSTRACT Introduction: Clinical assessment tool provides feedback on the student’s clinical performance by the Clinical Instructors (CIs) and the student themselves. There are few clinical assessment tools that had been used across different countries. However, each different assessment tool has its different strengths and weaknesses. There is no “gold standard” for physiotherapy student when it comes to clinical assessment tool available to assess them. Aim: To determine the validity and reliability of Physiotherapy Student Clinical Assessment Tool (PSCAT) for assessing student’s overall clinical performance during their clinical placement. Materials and Methods: It included development of a questionnaire which was revised and redesigned from various available similar questionnaires. It was distributed to 11 CIs from different universities to validate it. The inter-rater reliability of the tool involved 11 CIs and 40 students. Each student was assessed by two different CIs at the end of clinical posting. The validation was analysed by validity index and the inter-rater reliability was analysed by interpreting the Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC). Results: The results revealed that the PSCAT achieved sufficient construct (0.97), face (0.96), criterion-related (0.99) validity but had weak content validity (0.89). Reliability showed ICC as 0.64- 0.33 denoting moderate reliability. There were two components that had weak reliability. Conclusion: Physiotherapy Student Clinical Assessment Tool (PSCAT) is a valid and user-friendly tool where reliability requires further study.