Assessment of clinical skills in electrodiagnostic medicine

Abstract

Assessment of clinical skills in electrodiagnostic medicineProficiency in performing and interpreting electrodiagnostic (EDx) testing requires skills that are unique within the field of medicine. An EDx physician must generate a hypothesis based on the patient's presentation, gather specific EDx data to test that hypothesis, and continuously modify the study in an iterative fashion, all over the course of one clinical encounter. This distinctive framework of diagnostic reasoning requires integrating foundational knowledge of anatomy and electrophysiology with technical, procedural, and communication skills that are unique to the discipline. One of the challenges of assessing competency in EDx is the diversity of experiences and requirements of learners, including physical medicine and rehabilitation (PM&R) residents, adult and child neurology residents, neuromuscular medicine fellows, and clinical neurophysiology fellows. Standards for training are set by the Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) and the medical board organizations that certify candidates in each of these fields, but the program requirements and milestones needed for different competency domains vary across disciplines. 1-4 For instance, the ACGME adult neurology program requirements do not even mention EDx and have no procedural minimums. 1 The ACMGE program