All data in this study will be collected by nurse assessors with experience in aged care.
Tester 1 was an experienced guideline writer, and a developer of the iCAHE checklist; Tester 2 had moderate experience in guideline writing, and had some experience of using the iCAHE checklist, but no involvement with its development; and Tester 3 was a novice guideline assessor with no experience in using either instrument.
Independent assessors (n=24) with experience of assessing physician performance (e.g. through primary care qualification assessments, physician education programs), had experience of COPD management, but who were not part of the development of the CAT, assessed the videoed consultations.
Now Mr Staples, a bid assessor with 20 years' experience of the public procurement process, has also gone public with his criticisms.
The children were assessed 17 times during 9 consecutive years by a trained expert assessor with many years of experience in biomechanical assessments to avoid systematic bias throughout the longitudinal measurements.
In a second session, the DEMMI and other performance based measures of mobility and ambulation (POMA, FAC, 6MWT, gait speed) were performed by one of three different well experienced physiotherapists (T.B., J.R. and a third assessor with 8 years of work-experience) in a standardized order, starting with the DEMMI in each session.
Completion of a full assessment based on InterRAI instruments may take between 20 and 90 minutes depending on setting and assessor experience with the use of the instrument: in particular it has been estimated that between 60 and 90 minutes are necessary to complete an initial InterRAI LTCF assessment [ 17, 29].
However, in line with the observations by Steenson et al. [ 31] it appears more likely to be related to the assessors' long experience with the tested tool.
Assessors were physicians and GoB and NGO programme personnel with experience in the area of child health.
Two external assessors (MB and TD, physician and obstetrician, respectively, both with experience in practising obstetrics in West Africa) used project guidelines, WHO guidelines [ 11] and occasionally a textbook [ 12] to decide what constituted a CMP.
