IMG candidates' demographic characteristics as predictors of CEHPEA CE1 results.

Objective: To assess the extent to which demographic characteristics are related to international medical graduate (IMG) candidate performance on the Centre for the Evaluation of Health Professionals Educated Abroad General Comprehensive Clinical Examination 1 (CE1).

Design: Retrospective study.

Setting: Toronto, Ont.

Validation of a large-scale clinical examination for international medical graduates.

Objective: To evaluate a new examination process for international medical graduates (IMGs) to ensure that it is able to reliably assign candidates to 1 of 4 competency levels, and to determine if a global rating scale can accurately stratify examinees into 4 levels of learners: clerks, first-year residents, second-year residents, or practice ready.

Design: Validation study evaluating a 12-station objective structured clinical examination.

Setting: Ontario.

Game-based versus traditional case-based learning: comparing effectiveness in stroke continuing medical education.

Objective: To evaluate family physicians' enjoyment of and knowledge gained from game-based learning, compared with traditional case-based learning, in a continuing medical education (CME) event on stroke prevention and management.

Design: An equivalence trial to determine if game-based learning was as effective as case-based learning in terms of attained knowledge levels. Game questions and small group cases were developed.

Bacteriology, inflammation, and healing: a study of nanocrystalline silver dressings in chronic venous leg ulcers.

Background: Healing of venous leg ulcers (VLUs) is often stalled despite compression therapy. Increased bacterial burden and chronic inflammation are 2 factors that may prevent these chronic VLUs (CVLUs) from healing. There is evidence that nanocrystalline silver dressings may reduce bacterial levels, decrease the chronic inflammatory response, and thus promote wound healing.

Creative professional activity: an additional platform for promotion of faculty.

Academic promotion has traditionally been based on research and teaching, but faculty members' contributions to the profession may not be fully captured in those dimensions. Faculty members may influence the practice of medicine and improve the care of patients yet not obtain traditional measures of achievement through publications, grants, or teaching awards. With this problem in mind, at the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine, the promotions committee developed and implemented a promotions criterion called Creative Professional Activity (CPA) to recognize and reward a variety of types of academic endeavors that have a demonstrable impact on medical practice and care.

Consistency of standards and stability of pass/fail decisions with examinee-based standard-setting methods in a small-scale objective structured clinical examination.

Problem Statement And Background: The apparent feasibility and the face validity of the examinee-based methods such as the borderline-group methods provide support for their increasing adoption by health profession schools. Before that can occur, however, more information on the quality of the standards produced by these techniques is required. The purpose of the present study was to assess the quality of the standards produced on a small-scale objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) by the borderline-group and contrasting-groups examinee-based standard-setting procedures.

Effect of an undergraduate medical curriculum on students' self-directed learning.

Purpose: Lifelong, self-directed learning (SDL) has been identified as an important ability for medical graduates. To evaluate the effect of the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine's revised undergraduate medical curriculum on students' SDL, a cross-sectional study was conducted.

Method: A questionnaire package was mailed to 280 randomly selected students, 70 from each of the four years of the curriculum.

A sequenced OSCE for licensure: administrative issues, results and myths.

In response to stakeholder demands for a more cost-effective clinical examination, the Medical Council of Canada adopted a sequenced format for the OSCE component of its licensure examination. The sequenced OSCE was administered in 1997 at 14 sites and assessed 1,796 test takers. The 10-station screening test had an alpha = 0.

The effect of incorporating normative data into a criterion-referenced standard setting in medical education.

Purpose: Determining standards for assessing clinical performance is a controversial issue. Purely item-based methods such as the Angoff method often produce unrealistic judgments, even when used by experienced judges. The rather unstudied compromise methods combine absolute and relative judgments and thereby incorporate normative data into criterion-based standard-setting judgments.

Evaluating medical grand rounds.

Introduction: Since January 2000, standard presenter evaluation forms have been made available to grand rounds organizers in the Department of Medicine, University of Toronto. During the 2000-2001 academic year, effort was directed at the accumulation of evidence for the validity of the results generated.

Methods: Two issues were addressed: the integrity or coherence of the form itself and the number of forms or evaluations required to achieve a stable estimate of the construct "presenter effectiveness" for an individual presenter.

Using the Judgments of Physician Examiners in Setting the Standards for a National Multi-center High Stakes OSCE.

In 1994 and 1995, the Medical Council of Canada used an innovative approach to set the pass mark on its large scale, multi-center national OSCE which is designed to assess basic clinical and communication skills in physicians in Canada after 15 months of post-graduate medical training. The goal of this article is to describe the new approach and to present the experience with the method during its first two years of operation. The approach utilizes the global judgments of the physician examiners at each station to identify the candidates with borderline performances.