Introduction: To evaluate students' professional performance, it is important to choose a suitable evaluation system such Mini-Clinical Evaluation Exercise (Mini-CEX). This study was conducted to determine and compare the impact of Mini-CEX and conventional methods on anesthesiology students' clinical skills.
Materials and Methods: In this quasi-experimental study, 34 anesthesiology interns at School of Paramedicine, Hamedan University of Medical Sciences were selected by census method in 2015. According to the opinions of the faculty members of Hamedan University of Medical Sciences, three procedures (patient reception and transfer to the surgery room, report writing, and patient education in recovery) were selected from among the main nursing procedures. The students were divided into two experimental and control groups by simple random sampling method. After training and measuring inter-rater reliability, assessment was done by Mini-CEX method using a researcher-made checklist in six rounds during the course in experimental group and by conventional method in control group. The results were analyzed by descriptive and inferential statistics (paired t-test and independent t-test).
Results: The mean final scores of assessment in experimental group (Mini-CEX) were significantly higher than those of control group. The results of paired t-test showed the mean scores 6.36 ± 67.23 in the patient reception and transfer                         (P = 0.001), 5.28 ± 37.70 in the patient education (P=0.001) and 4.46 ± 48.82 in the report writing (P=0.001) procedure, indicating a statistically significant difference. In addition, the mean score of students' satisfaction with Mini-CEX method (15.50 ± 62.94) was significantly higher than that of conventional method (14.02 ± 54.82) (P = 0.019).
Conclusion: Students' clinical skills were improved using Mini-CEX method. It is recommended that the medical faculties use new assessment methods to evaluate clinical procedures and promote students’ learning.