Urology needs models of competencies assessment, although there is a wide range of tools not yet integrated into the official training programs.
Context: At present, there is no universal framework for measuring surgeons' level of competence. Urology training programs should provide and consider knowledge, pyschomotor/cognitive skills, and simulator, cadaver or animal models-based training. Validity is a complex concept that refers to the capacity of the evaluation tool, so it is necessary to demonstrate several types of validation to assure the capacity of a method, reinforced with different reliability tests and calculation of internal consistency between evaluators.
Objective: Based on a structured dossier of surgical skills, classified by groups, the ESSCOLAP® Basic system was proposed with 5 simulator tasks to evaluate basic laparoscopic skills. Once validated in the JUMISC (Spain), the tool was proposed to extend its scope and implementation in other locations.
Results: Our system has not yet demonstrated a full validity in the real clinical setting because a predictive validity needs to be demonstrated on the basis of clinical data. It also suffers from a certain range of subjectivity, thus implying clear and defined criteria for any situation. Factors like the number of evaluators and tasks to assess will influence the reliability tests that measure the degree of agreement between evaluators, so that a higher number of evaluated cases would imply a greater reliability of our system. Finally, we assume that the incorporation of this type of tools implies an added cost, charged to the public and private responsible institutions, which will only be considered cost-effective when it is demonstrated its real and positive traceability in health outcomes.
Conclusions: ESSCOLAP® Basic, of quick and simple implementation capacity, has been validated and calibrated for the evaluation of basic technical skills in laparoscopy.