ArticleThe British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners2005
Using a 'peer assessment questionnaire' in primary medical care.
Article in The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners, 2005. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Using Peer Feedback to Promote Clinical Excellence in Hospital Medicine.Journal of general internal medicine · 2020Review
- Measuring the quality and quantity of professional intrapartum support: testing a computerised systematic observation tool in the clinical setting.BMC pregnancy and childbirth · 2013Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundPeriodic assessment of clinician performance or 'revalidation' is being actively considered to reassure the public that doctors are 'up to date and fit to practice'. There is, therefore, increasing interest in how to assess individual clinician performance in a valid and reliable way. The use of peer assessment questionnaires is one of the methods being considered and investigated by the General Medical Council in the UK.
aimTo test the feasibility of using a peer assessment questionnaire in a primary care setting, and consider the related issues of validity and reliability and compare the results to previous studies.
designCross-sectional survey in a volunteer sample.
settingGeneral practice in the UK.
methodGPs who volunteered to take part in an evaluation of a pilot appraisal implementation scheme were recruited by appraisers. These volunteers (GP subjects) chose 15 colleagues to complete a 'peer assessment' questionnaire that asked peers to make judgements about their clinical skills and other characteristics, such as 'compassion', 'integrity' and 'responsibility'.
resultsOf the 207 practitioners that agreed to be appraised, 113 completed the optional task of implementing the peer questionnaire. Of the 1271 raters, 1189 provided data about their roles and 33.6% of these were GPs. The data revealed significant levels of items where peers were 'unable to evaluate' the issues posed in the questionnaire (ranging from 13.7-1.8%). These rates differed from those obtained in studies based in the US where mean scores were slightly higher. Although the overall results are broadly similar to those previously obtained, there are sufficient differences to suggest that there are contextual issues influencing the interpretation of the items and therefore the scoring process.
conclusionThe volunteer sample in this study found no major obstacles to the implementation of the peer assessment questionnaire. While it is not possible to generalise from this selected volunteer sample, the use of peer assessment questionnaires appears feasible and may be acceptable to clinical practitioners. However, concern remains about the validity of such instruments and that their development did not fully consider issues of procedural justice or whether the overall purpose of the tools was to be formative, summative, or both.
Indexed as
Identifiers
16176736PMC1464068What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.