Assessment of competencies in medicine

Abstract

• The assessment of students and its methodology are topics frequently discussed and permanently reviewed in medical schools. The main objectives of assessment are:

• Directing student learning,

• Determining whether the students achieved the objectives set out in the curriculum,

• Driving strategies on teaching methodology and learning

• Ensuring the community the professional competence of those who graduate.

To assess the competence of students and graduates, different methods may be used, provided that they are consistent with the methodology of teaching and that the tools are properly designed. The main objective is that every evaluation become part of an assessment programme. Such "assessment programme” should entail a set of activities that begin with the knowledge and retrieval of knowledge (pretest), followed by a continuous formative assessment, and culminating with one or more partial summative tests and a final exam. The assessment of competences should be done, then, in an integrated manner, covering the concepts, skills and attitudes of each competence. It should also account for the acquisition process of such one. It is indeed very difficult to combine all this content into a single assessment tool and at the same time, to cover a wide range of clinical situations or cases which should be addressed by a medicine graduate; hence the need for complementarity between two or more tools to meet these objectives.