Ann. Pak. Inst. Med. Sci. 2010; 6(1): 62-66

Background: In the assessment of Basic Life support Skills taught to the health workers, the use of video recordings can be utilized in the virtual learning environment if proved to be a reliable method.
Aims: This study analyses whether video recording is a reliable tool in basic life support skills assessment.
Materials and Methods: The health workers trained in basic life support skills were assessed while performing the skill on an infant manikin. The skill was recorded by a camera and was directly observed by an instructor who marked the performance on a BLS skill assessment instrument in the form of a numeric score as well as an overall pass fail score. The recordings were coded and two ALSG certified instructors viewed the video recordings independently, rating every BLS performance using the same assessment sheet that was used for on-site assessment.
Results: There was good correlation between the two video assessments (ICC 0.957) as well as among the observed assessment and the two video assessments (ICC 0.973 with 95% CI; 0.959 – 0.982 and 0.957 with 95% CI; 0.934 – 0.971).
Conclusion: Video recording of basic life support skills is a reliable assessment tool.

Introduction

Basic Life Support Skills (BLS) is an essential skill for medical practitioners and the assessment of the health worker’s competence cannot be underestimated. There can be various methods of assessment of a skill, hands on performance on a manikin is one of the commonly used methods. The role of video recordings in medical education is already recognized in teaching, training and to some extent in assessment. In our study we propose to test the reliability of video recordings in the assessment of BLS skills.
Pakistan is a developing country and the Emergency Maternal and Child Health (ESS-EMCH) course is a life-support training designed specifically for health workers by Advanced Life Support Group (ALSG), UK.1,2, The qualified instructors are expected to conform to uniform teaching and assessment protocols as laid down by ALSG-UK.1The local instructors have been conducting the ESS-EMCH courses in Pakistan since January 2005. One of the essential components of these courses is to teach Basic Life Support (BLS) skills according to internationally accredited BLS protocol.
This study compared the on-spot live assessment of a set of randomly selected BLS performances to the re-assessment made on the video records of the same performances from various courses. This study was conducted as part of a comprehensive evaluation of ESS-EMCH courses conducted in Pakistan during 2006.