• O M A Ahmed, B D O'Donnell, A G Gallagher, D S Breslin, C M Nix, and G D Shorten.
• University College Cork and Cork University Hospital, Cork, Ireland. dr19osman@icloud.com.
• Anaesthesia. 2016 Nov 1; 71 (11): 1324-1331.

AbstractThe purpose of this study was to examine the construct validity and reliability of a novel metrics-based assessment tool, previously developed for ultrasound-guided axillary brachial plexus block. Five expert and eight novice anaesthetists performed a total of 18 ultrasound-guided axillary brachial plexus blocks on the same number of patients. A trained investigator video-taped procedures according to a pre-defined protocol. Two trained consultant anaesthetists independently scored the videos using the assessment tool. Compared with novices, experts completed more steps (mean 41.0 vs. 33.1, p = 0.001), had fewer procedural errors (2.8 vs. 7.9, p < 0.0001), had fewer critical errors (0.8 vs. 1.3, p = 0.030), and fewer total errors (3.5 vs. 9.1, p < 0.0001). The mean inter-rater reliability for scoring of experts' performance was 0.91, for novices' performance was 0.84, and for all performance combined (n = 18) was 0.88. This assessment tool is valid, and discriminates reliably between expert and novice performance for placement of ultrasound-guided axillary brachial plexus blocks.© 2016 The Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland.

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