Hopkins Assessment of Surgical Competency (HASC)
Chou et al. developed the Hopkins Assessment of Surgical Competency
(HASC), which contains two assessment scales, General Surgical Skills
and Case Specific Surgical Skills, to measure trainee surgical
competency in gynaecologic surgery.18. With the
exception of oncology cases, all levels of surgical complexity were
covered, from hysterectomy to dilation of cervix to urogynaecology.
The assessment form contains seven items from OSATS14and four from an American Council on Resident Education in Obstetrics
and Gynecology toolbox. Another four items were included from a rating
system already in use at Chou et al-s’ institution. After modifying all
the items using factor analysis, the results were divided into two
six-item scales, a case-specific one and a general surgical one, each
item scored using a five-point Likert scale. Sixteen faculty physicians
evaluated 16 trainees after the trainees had performed surgery. The
trainees also performed self-evaluation.
Their study analysed 362 cases, and the authors find internal validity
and reliability, demonstrated by high Cronbach’s alpha
(>.80) and high Pearson correlation coefficients
(>0.80) for both scales. Discriminant validity was also
significant (p<0.001) for both scales when comparing the
performance of trainees in their second and fourth year of training.