The development and validation of the mini-surgical theatre educational environment measure

Figures & data

Table

Practice points
•The educational environment is an important educational measure which has a large impact on the satisfaction and success of undergraduate medical education.
•The educational environment in the operating theatre for undergraduate students is positive in one major teaching hospital in one UK medical school.
•The mini-STEEM is a reliable and valid tool with which to measure educational environment in medical undergraduates.
•The mini-STEEM is easy to use.

Table 1.  Scores for each of the 13 questions and overall score for the mini-STEEM

Question number and theme of each question	N	Min	Max	Mean	Std. deviation
Q1 – Enthusiastic trainer	98	1.00	5.00	3.7245	1.03327
Q2 – Theatre staff friendly	99	1.00	5.00	3.9293	0.81130
Q3 – Enough theatre sessions for getting experience	98	1.00	5.00	3.9184	0.92696
Q4 – Before operation – trainer discusses surgical technique	98	1.00	5.00	2.7755	1.09855
Q5 – Elective operating list has right case mix	99	1.00	5.00	3.3232	0.95648
Q6 – Good variety of emergency cases	99	1.00	5.00	3.0404	1.03922
Q7 – Enough opportunity to assist	99	1.00	5.00	3.0505	1.18987
Q8 – Operations too complex for my level*	99	1.00	5.00	3.0505	1.12824
Q9 – Anaesthetists put pressure on for trainer to operate*	99	1.00	5.00	3.6263	0.92124
Q10 – Discrimination in theatre because of my sex*	99	1.00	5.00	4.0909	0.94859
Q11 – Discrimination in theatre because of my race*	99	1.00	5.00	4.2828	0.90396
Q12 – Too busy doing other work to go to theatre*	99	1.00	5.00	2.5303	1.13573
Q14 – Pleasant atmosphere in theatre	98	1.00	5.00	3.7245	0.78360
Overall scores for all 13 questions	95	30.0	61.0	44.9211	7.08434

*Denotes data has been reverse coded for this question (see Results – section on practicability).

Table 2.  The rotated component matrix showing the loading of the questions onto the three factors

	Component
Question number and theme	1	2	3
Q5 – Elective operating list has right case mix	0.728
Q6 – Good variety of emergency cases	0.727
Q4 – Before operation - trainer discusses surgical technique	0.640
Q7 – Enough opportunity to assist	0.626
Q12 – Too busy doing other work to go to theatre	0.624
Q2 – Theatre staff friendly		0.818
Q14 – Pleasant atmosphere in theatre		0.699
Q3 – Enough theatre sessions for getting experience		0.682
Q1 – Enthusiastic trainer		0.563
Q11 – Discrimination in theatre because of my race			0.853
Q10 – Discrimination in theatre because of my sex			0.795
Q9 – Anaesthetists put pressure on for trainer to operate			0.756
Q8 – Operations too complex for my level