Author: John Ruedy
ABSTRACT
The recent elaboration of the range of physician competencies upon which the quality of health care is dependent has fostered the development of a variety of methods of assessing medical student competencies and performance. Such assessments are essential in providing feedback to students to guide their learning and to faculty on the success of the curriculum in achieving competency outcomes. In addition they provide evidence that students have achieved minimum requirements for progressing. Well-designed Observed Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs), Mini-Clinical Examinations (Mini-CEXs) and some forms of Multi-Source Feedback (MSF) can meet acceptable standards of validity and reliability and are feasible. Competency assessments are limited in predicting how a student will actually act in the work situation particularly in humanistic skills. More emphasis needs to be placed on student performance, in such competencies as communication and professionalism, in a variety of settings by a number of observers.
Keywords: assessment, evaluation, clinical competence, performance, multi-source feedback.
Citation: IeJSME 2007: 1 (1): 15-21