Surgical Procedure-based Assessment: How Did We Get Here and Where are we Going?

The Intercollegiate Surgical Curriculum Programme (ISCP) has implemented a tool for assessment of surgical technique called procedure-based assessment (PBA). It is part of a spectrum of workplace-based assessments being used for the surgical specialist training programmes. We reviewed the literature on observational assessment of surgical practice in order to analyse how PBAs relate to the evidence base for this form of assessment.