Abstract

Background

Anonymized videotaped endoscopic procedures can be used for the assessment of surgical competence, but a reliable non-procedure-specific scoring system is needed for gynaecology.

Objectives

To design and evaluate the validity of the Generic Laparoscopic Video Scoring System (GLVS), a novel tool in the assessment of various gynaecological laparoscopic procedures.

Materials and methods

Seventeen anonymized unedited video recordings of various gynaecological laparoscopic procedures and the 4-minute-long edited versions of the same videos were independently scored by two experts, twice, using GLVS.

Main outcome measures

Internal consistency reliability, test-retest, and inter-rater reliability of GLVS. We also compared the scored achieved by edited videos with those of the full-length version of the same videos.

Results

The mean score achieved by 4-minute-long edited videos was similar to that of the unedited version (p= 0.13 - 0.19). There was excellent correlation between the pooled scores for edited and unedited versions (intra-class correlation coefficient = 0.86). GLVS had excellent internal consistency reliability (Cronbach’s alpha 0.92-0.97). Test-retest and inter-rater reliability were generally better for edited 4-minute-long videos compared to their full-length version. Test-retest reliability for edited videos was excellent for scorer 1 and good for scorer 2 with intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) of 0.88 and 0.62 respectively. Inter-rater reliability was good for edited videos (ICC=0.64) but poor for full-length versions (ICC= -0.24).

Conclusion

GLVS allows for objective surgical skills assessment using anonymized shortened self-edited videos  of basic gynaecological laparoscopic procedures. Shortened video clips of procedures seem to be representative  of their full-length version for the assessment of surgical skills.

What’s new? We devised and undertook a validation study for a novel tool to assess surgical skills using surgical video clips. We believe this addition clearly delineates the unique contributions of our study.