RT Journal
A1 McKinley RK, Hastings AM
T1 TOols to assess clinical skills of medical trainees
JF JAMA
JO JAMA
YR 2010
FD January 27
VO 303
IS 4
SP 331
OP 332
DO 10.1001/jama.2010.20
UL http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jama.2010.20
AB 
To the Editor: The core clinical skills of physicians are generic, similar across medical specialties, and assessable from the start of their medical education to the end of their careers. Therefore, the synthesis of the literature on assessment of clinical skills by Dr Kogan and colleagues1 was valuable. It was a challenging undertaking because the literature is disparate and difficult to identify, exemplified by the 10 000 abstracts that were reviewed to identify the 55 instruments included. Although we agree that the strongest evidence arises from a range of settings, the absence of evidence for one instrument does not automatically indicate the superiority of another for which there is more abundant evidence.