Share thisAn objective assessment program raises competence which, in turn, improves animal welfare and research.
Biomethodolgy and surgical competency assessment has gained extensive attention this year. Contributing factors include: continual increasing public attention focused on animal welfare, the need to reduce non-experimental variables in research, application of the three R’s (refinement, reduction, and replacement), and recent updates and changes in guidelines and regulations, which require that personnel working with animals have appropriate training. These factors, in turn, indicate the need for assessment of competency and proficiency.
In an effort to reduce non-experimental variables in research, standardization of certain procedures is of fundamental importance.With this standardization comes the implicit need for training to uphold the standards. In order to determine if the training objectives were achieved, competency assessment is a logical and necessary step to determine program effectiveness. Assessment of competence is an imperative component of the training process because it identifies deficiencies in performance, which allows for targeted subsequent training to address the areas of greatest need.
The assessment of competency must be an objective process. Currently, numerous institutions require and provide biomethodology training and some type of assessment. This typically includes a person observing the trainee performing specific techniques and deciding if the trainee is proficient, yet only a small number of institutions perform objective assessment utilizing an objective scoring system.
For surgical procedures, which generally carry a higher potential for pain and distress than most non surgical procedures, many institutions require surgical training but only a small number of institutions provide objective competency assessment. Investigators and their staff usually learn surgical procedures, especially rodent surgical procedures, on their own through trial and error or from a person who commonly does not have formal surgical training. In these situations, surgical competency assessment often includes evaluation of post-surgical mortality and morbidity as parameters to measure success. Using clinical outcomes is not the most effective way to perform competency assessment, because there are many factors outside of the surgeon’s control—and without tightly controlling all aspects of variability, there is a lack of standardization among subjects. Using clinical outcomes as the standard for evaluating surgical success provides little information with regard to the cause of morbidity: such as surgical technique and factors like hypothermia during anesthesia, anesthetic dose miscalculations, strain variability, or other variables.