Teaching and learning in medicine
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Construct: This study seeks to determine validity evidence for the Quality of Assessment for Learning score (QuAL score), which was created to evaluate short qualitative comments that are related to specific scores entered into a workplace-based assessment, common within the competency-based medical education (CBME) context. Background: In the age of CBME, qualitative comments play an important role in clarifying the quantitative scores rendered by observers at the bedside. Currently there are few practical tools that evaluate mixed data (e.g. associated score-and-comment data), other than the comprehensive Completed Clinical Evaluation Report Rating tool (CCERR) that was originally derived to rate end-of-rotation reports. ⋯ The CCERR performed similarly, correlating with perceived faculty (r = 0.67, <0.001) and resident utility (0.79, <0.001). Conclusions: The QuAL score is reliable rating score that correlates well with perceptions of utility. The QuAL score may be useful for rating shorter comments generated by workplace-based assessments.
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Issue: Medical assistance in dying (MAID) became legal in Quebec on December 10, 2015, and in the rest of Canada on June 17, 2016. This enabled 6,749 deaths through physician-assisted suicide or euthanasia between December 10, 2015 and October 31, 2018. While the death of a patient is a common experience for medical trainees, those that occur through MAID have unique features related to the methods, the timeline, the intended role of the physician in causing the death, and the request of the patient that initiates the process. ⋯ Implications: Following a MAID request, attending physicians can use the framework to guide learners in ongoing conversations addressing these domains. Inter-professional participation can include such disciplines as psychiatry, palliative care, bioethics, pharmacy, nursing, physical and occupational therapy, social work, and spiritual care. Further research is necessary to test this framework to determine its' feasibility, efficacy, and generalizability.
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Comparative Study
Linking Workplace-Based Assessment to ACGME Milestones: A Comparison of Mapping Strategies in Two Specialties.
Construct: The construct that is assessed is competency in Pediatrics and Internal Medicine residency training. Background: The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) created milestones to measure learner progression toward competence over time but not as direct assessment tools. Ideal measurement of resident performance includes direct observation and assessment of patient care skills in the workplace. ⋯ Conclusions: Mapping workplace-based assessments to the ACGME subcompetencies allowed each program to see the whole of their curricula in ways that were not possible before and to identify existing curricular and assessment gaps. Although each program used similar assessment tools, the assessment data generated were different. The lessons learned in this work could inform other programs attempting to link their own workplace-based assessment elements to ACGME subcompetencies.
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Phenomenon: Given the growing number of medical science educators, an examination of institutions' promotion criteria related to educational excellence and scholarship is timely. This study investigates the extent to which medical schools' promotion criteria align with published standards for documenting and evaluating educational activities. Approach: This document analysis systematically analyzed promotion and tenure (P&T) guidelines from U. ⋯ S. medical schools have thoroughly embraced published recommendations for documenting and evaluating educational excellence. This raises concern for medical educators who may be evaluated for promotion based on vague or incomplete promotion criteria. With greater awareness of how educational excellence is currently documented and how promotion criteria can be improved, education-focused faculty can better recognize gaps in their own documentation practices, and more schools may be encouraged to embrace change and align with published recommendations.
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Issue: While an increasingly diverse workforce of clinicians, researchers, and educators will be needed to address the nation's future healthcare challenges, underrepresented in medicine (UIM) perspectives remain relatively absent from academic medicine. Evidence: Prior studies have identified differential experiences within the learning environment, lack of social supports, and implicit bias in evaluations as barriers to the academic interests and successes of UIM learners. ⋯ Such initiatives should aim to teach a common language to discuss diversity issues and place the responsibility of fostering inclusion on all members of the academic community. Our own institutional experience with systemic cultural reform challenges others to develop novel approaches toward fostering inclusion in academic medicine.