Development of a Tool to Assess the Team Leadership Skills of Medical Residents

Abstract

Purpose: To develop a tool to assess the team leadership skills of internal medicine residents.

Method: A 27-item pilot instrument developed by two authors was distributed to interns on ward and intensive care unit teams at the end of rotations from a single institution’s internal medicine residency program. These items were factor analyzed and reduced to a seven-item resident leadership scale (RLS). Validity of the instrument was assessed by comparing the rating on the RLS to scores on a validated measure of teaching skills provided at the same time and by the program director’s global rating of team leadership skill for each resident at the completion of data collection.

Results: The three principal components from the factor analysis explained 82 percent of the variance. By introspection we reduced the scale to the final 7-item RLS that had a Cronbach alpha reliability estimate of 0.95. 490 ratings on 134 individual residents were available for analysis. The RLS scores correlated highly with both the validated measure of teaching skill and the program director’s ratings.

Conclusion: The RLS has robust psychometric properties. It may provide a useful tool for a broader assessment of trainee skill if validated in other settings.

Keywords::

• graduate medical education,
• management,
• leadership,
• assessment