A Model for Evaluating the Clinical Skills of Respiratory Therapy Personnel

Although evaluation of clinical skills is an integral part of training future respiratory therapy personnel, the same evaluation methods can be similarly applied to good benefit in the respiratory therapy practice environment. The process of developing evaluation instruments forces a group to define standards by which clinical skills will be judged and thus to establish and measure themselves against mutually agreed-upon standards of patient care. To ensure that the evaluation process is fair and reliable, evaluators must be trained to recognize content deficiencies, psychomotor deficiencies, verbal miscommunication, and nonverbal miscommunication. They must know how to standardize test conditions. They must identify and reduce their own rating error tendencies. And they must practice on performance samples (videotaped, simulated, or actual) until rating errors are essentially eliminated and ratings are consistent throughout the rating team.