Proficiency development for graduating medical students, using skills-level-appropriate mastery learning versus traditional learning for chest tube placement: Assessing anxiety, confidence, and performance.

Background: Mastery learning is an effective educational tool to assess basic procedural skill proficiency and may also be beneficial for more complex skills along the continuum of surgical training. In addition, anxiety and confidence have effects on cognitive and decision-making performance, both in educational and clinical settings. This study evaluates anxiety and confidence in a skills-level-appropriate mastery learning module for chest tube insertion in graduating medical students.