Razi Journal of Medical Sciences

Background: Evaluation of clinical skills, investigates routine tasks of a physician in the workplace. Direct observation procedural skills or DOPS test is used to evaluate clinical procedures. The aim of this study was determination of impact of emergency department internship course on medical interns’ clinical performance‎ and its affecting factors by ‎this test.

Methods: This study was semi-experimental and DOPS test was applied to all emergency department interns two times at the beginning and end of the study period and the assessor scored them according to a checklist suited for interns’ performance. Test scores were compared by Wilcoxon test.

Results: In total, 76 participants were able to fulfill the first and second tests. The mean (SD) of test scores was from 12.35(±1.59) to 13.60 (±1.28) which shows 1.25 score increase (p= 0.00).

Conclusion: DOPS test showed that clinical performance of interns has increased significantly during one month of emergency course, so investigating of effective variables in improving clinical competencies of future physicians seems very useful.