Maintaining consistency and fairness when grading in a clinical setting can be difficult with the best method of clinical evaluation remaining unclear. Therefore, it is important to develop methods to ensure that instructors are scoring their students fairly within professional allied health programs.
Objective: The purpose of this study was to determine the accuracy of scoring students in real-time compared to video.
Methods: Subjects consisted of 27 students enrolled in an allied health professional program. Students were taught a psychomotor clinical skill (PCS) and subsequently performed the skill while being graded in both real-time and videotape.
Results: Investigators provided higher scores when assessing students in real-time versus videotaped evaluation (p = 0.006, 1-b = 0.812). There was a trend (p = 0.074; 1-b = 0.514) toward students' classification (sophomore, junior, or graduate) affecting scoring accuracy.
Conclusion: These findings indicate students receive higher performance scores during real-time scoring as opposed to videotape scoring. Inaccurate PCS evaluations are perhaps especially noted in students from lower academic classifications who tended to make more mistakes.