The Ophthalmic Knowledge Assessment Program (OKAP) Examination and Global Evaluation of Resident Per
2008,Volume 1, Number 1 20 Introduction The Ophthalmic Knowledge Assessment Program (OKAP) examination was initially developed as an in-ternal evaluation tool for resident physicians at the Uni-versity of Florida in Gainesville. In May of 1968, the examination was first administered on a national basis, and over 85% of all eye training programs participated. Management of the OKAP examination was adopted by the Continuing Education arm of the American Acad-emy of Ophthalmology and Otolaryngology (AAOO) and later, in 1979, by the newly independent American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO). For many years, the OKAP examination was administered in combina-tion with the national ophthalmology board (American Board of Ophthalmology) examination as a single test, before the written qualifying examination (WQE or written boards ) and the OKAP examination became separate entities in 1993. Since that time, the OKAP examination has returned to being a personal bench-mark of basic knowledge and a preparatory test for resi-dents preparing to take the WQE [1]. The Clinical Education arm of the AAO now manages the OKAP examination, while the American Board of Ophthalmol-ogy (ABO) manages the WQE. However, there is con-tinued communication between the AAO and ABO re-garding the two tests and a Liaison Committee functions to ascertain that the OKAP examination is an adequate tool of preparation for the WQE. The AAO intends for the OKAP examination to be an educational tool for both the resident physician and the training program and results are only released to the individual resident and their respective program direc-tors [1]. The purpose of the test is to allow residents to measure their progress towards mastery of information related to ophthalmology (especially in preparation for the WQE) and to allow training programs to evaluate their effectiveness in delivering medical knowledge to their residents-in-training. The Ophthalmic Knowledge Assessment Program (OKAP) Examination and Global Evaluation of Jordan M. Graff, MD 1 , Thomas A. Oetting, MS, MD 1,2 , Andrew G. Lee, MD 1,3* 1 Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences, University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, Iowa City, IA 2 Veterans Affairs Medical Center, University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, Iowa City, IA 3 Departments of Neurology and Neurosurgery, University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, Iowa City, IA * Corresponding Author & e-mail: andrew-lee@uiowa.edu Abstract The Ophthalmic Knowledge Assessment Program (OKAP) examination is an in-training educational assessment tool administered by the Clinical Education portion of the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO). The goals of this study are to review the use of the OKAP at a single academic institution and to compare faculty global evaluations of resident knowledge and performance against OKAP scores. A retrospective analysis was performed of the percentile rank OKAP examination score for 15 ophthalmology resi-dent physicians over 3 years at a university-based ophthalmology residency training facility in the United States (The University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics). The percentile rank was compared to the average summative evaluation score for all rotations awarded to these same residents by supervising faculty who were masked to the OKAP score results. There was no correlation between OKAP examination results and masked faculty scoring of resident overall perform-ance ( = 0.11). Our data suggest that the OKAP score and global evaluation of resident performance might not correlate well and we recommend that caution and additional study are warranted before applying the self-assessment, preparatory OKAP exami-nation as an external competency tool for employment or fellowship selection. Accepted for publication July 2, 2007 Revision received November 4, 2007 2008; 1:20-24 Available on the web at http://www.academic-ophthalmology.com The author(s) have no personal financial interest in any of the prod-ucts or technologies cited herein. Â 2008