To explore the evaluation effect of direct observation of procedural skills (DOPS) during the teaching practice of diagnostics.

In the teaching practice of clinical diagnostic skills, the mode of " teaching-training-DOPS evaluation-retraining (feedback-improvement)-reevaluation" was adopted to teach and evaluate 91 students (30 students from each grade of 2014, 2016, and 31 students from grade 2015) in the class of outstanding doctors in clinical medicine specialty from the Fall Semester from August to December each year from 2017 to 2019 in Medical College of Qingdao University, and the teaching effect and teachers′ and students′ satisfaction of the first, third and fifth DOPS evaluation were discussed.

The DOPS scores of operation disinfection and applying sterile towel [(44.54±12.12)points, (65.79±13.70)points, (72.57±14.33)points], dressing change [(44.38±14.90)points, (54.74±11.52)points, (74.90±15.26)points], cut up and suture [(39.50±22.44)points, (45.17±17.01)points, (67.65±13.72)points], thoracentesis[(37.71±12.23)points, (63.53±14.55)points, (74.18±15.02)points], abdominocentesis [(37.93±19.87)points, (57.77±12.71)points, (72.41±14.37)points], lumbar puncture [(34.52±11.93)points, (48.90±10.24)points, (71.05±15.48)points], bone marrow puncture [(32.20±10.75)points, (48.51±9.57)points, (68.94±14.11)points] were gradually increased (F=72.42, 84.33, 91.31, 74.18, 79.30, 82.74, 79.36, all P<0.01). The proportions of students with excellent clinical operation skills were gradually increased [12.09%(11/91), 42.86%(39/91), 51.65%(47/91)] in thoracentesis (χ²=71.64, P<0.01). However, after multiple DOPS evaluation, some students still fail to meet the requirements in terms of skill proficiency (18.68%, 17/91), strict aseptic concept (15.38%, 14/91), doctor-patient communication (7.69%, 7/91), humanistic care (7.69%, 7/91) and other aspects. The satisfaction scores of teachers [(3.68±0.98)points, (5.63±1.22)points, (7.38±1.31)points] and students [(3.72±1.04)points, (5.74±1.21)points, (7.72±1.25)points] on multiple DOPS evaluation increased gradually (F=140.20, 116.96, all P<0.01), but there were no differences in the satisfaction scores between teachers and students (t=0.29, 1.81, 0.94, all P>0.05).

As an effective formative evaluation method, DOPS can significantly improve the teaching effect of clinical operation skills.