Understanding Medical Students' Attitudes Toward Learning eHealth: Questionnaire Study.

Background: Several publications on research into eHealth demonstrate promising results. Prior researchers indicated that the current generation of doctors is not trained to take advantage of eHealth in clinical practice. Therefore, training and education for everyone using eHealth are key factors to its successful implementation.

Feedback Redefined: Principles and Practice.

Feedback is defined as a regulatory mechanism where the effect of an action is fed back to modify and improve future action. In medical education, newer conceptualizations of feedback place the learner at the center of the feedback loop and emphasize learner engagement in the entire process. But, learners reject feedback if they doubt its credibility or it conflicts with their self-assessment.

Composite reliability of workplace-based assessment of international medical graduates.

Objective: The fitness to practise of international medical graduates (IMGs) is usually evaluated with standardised assessment tests. The performance rather than the competency of practising doctors should, however, be assessed, for which reason workplace-based assessment (WBA) has gained increasing attention. Our aim was to assess the composite reliability of WBA instruments for assessing IMGs.

Validation of the INCEPT: A Multisource Feedback Tool for Capturing Different Perspectives on Physicians' Professional Performance.

Introduction: Multisource feedback (MSF) instruments are used to and must feasibly provide reliable and valid data on physicians' performance from multiple perspectives. The "INviting Co-workers to Evaluate Physicians Tool" (INCEPT) is a multisource feedback instrument used to evaluate physicians' professional performance as perceived by peers, residents, and coworkers. In this study, we report on the validity, reliability, and feasibility of the INCEPT.

Feasibility of peer assessment and clinical audit to self-regulate the quality of physiotherapy services: a mixed methods study.

Objectives: To evaluate the feasibility of a quality improvement programme aimed to enhance the client-centeredness, effectiveness and transparency of physiotherapy services by addressing three feasibility domains: (1) acceptability of the programme design, (2) appropriateness of the implementation strategy and (3) impact on quality improvement.

Design: Mixed methods study.

Participants And Setting: 64 physiotherapists working in primary care, organised in a network of communities of practice in the Netherlands.

Cracking the code: residents' interpretations of written assessment comments.

Context: Interest is growing in the use of qualitative data for assessment. Written comments on residents' in-training evaluation reports (ITERs) can be reliably rank-ordered by faculty attendings, who are adept at interpreting these narratives. However, if residents do not interpret assessment comments in the same way, a valuable educational opportunity may be lost.

The use of instructional design guidelines to increase effectiveness of postpartum hemorrhage simulation training.

Objective: To compare learning outcomes of postpartum hemorrhage simulation training based on either instructional design guidelines or best practice.

Methods: A pretest-post-test non-equivalent groups study was conducted among obstetrics and gynecology residents in Recife, Brazil, from June 8 to August 30, 2013. The instructional design group included 13 teams, whereas the best practice group included seven teams.

How clinical medical students perceive others to influence their self-regulated learning.

Objectives: Undergraduate medical students are prone to struggle with learning in clinical environments. One of the reasons may be that they are expected to self-regulate their learning, which often turns out to be difficult. Students' self-regulated learning is an interactive process between person and context, making a supportive context imperative.

Teachers' conceptions of learning and teaching in student-centred medical curricula: the impact of context and personal characteristics.

Background: Gibbs and Coffey (2004) have reported that teaching practices are influenced by teachers' conceptions of learning and teaching. In our previous research we found significant differences between teachers' conceptions in two medical schools with student-centred education. Medical school was the most important predictor, next to discipline, gender and teaching experience.

Factors influencing students' receptivity to formative feedback emerging from different assessment cultures.

Introduction: Feedback after assessment is essential to support the development of optimal performance, but often fails to reach its potential. Although different assessment cultures have been proposed, the impact of these cultures on students' receptivity to feedback is unclear. This study aimed to explore factors which aid or hinder receptivity to feedback.

On the issue of costs in programmatic assessment.

Programmatic assessment requires labour and cost intensive activities such as feedback in a quantitative and qualitative form, a system of learner support in guiding feedback uptake and self-directed learning, and a decision-making arrangement that includes committees of experts making a holistic professional judgment while using due process measures to achieve trustworthy decisions. This can only be afforded if we redistribute the resources of assessment in a curriculum. Several strategies are suggested.

Composite reliability of workplace-based assessment for international medical graduates.

Objective: The fitness to practise of international medical graduates (IMGs) is usually evaluated with standardised assessment tests. Practising doctors should, however, be assessed on their performance rather than their competency, for which reason workplace-based assessment (WBA) has gained increasing attention. Our aim was to assess the composite reliability of WBA instruments for assessing the performance of IMGs.

Patterns in clinical students' self-regulated learning behavior: a Q-methodology study.

Students feel insufficiently supported in clinical environments to engage in active learning and achieve a high level of self-regulation. As a result clinical learning is highly demanding for students. Because of large differences between students, supervisors may not know how to support them in their learning process.

Bridging the gap: a five stage approach for developing specialty-specific entrustable professional activities.

Background: Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs) are increasingly used as a focus for assessment in graduate medical education (GME). However, a consistent approach to guide EPA design is currently lacking, in particular concerning the actual content (knowledge, skills and attitude required for specific tasks) for EPAs. This paper describes a comprehensive five stage approach, which was used to develop two specialty-specific EPAs in emergency medicine focused on the first year of GME.

Progress testing in intensive care medicine training: useful and feasible?!

So far the in-training assessment of knowledge is perhaps underrepresented in postgraduate assessment frameworks in intensive care medicine (ICM). In most contemporary training programs a predominant emphasis is placed on workplace based learning and workplace based assessment. This article provides a concise general background on the nature and use of progress testing, and touches upon potential strengths, and constraints regarding its potential implementation and use in the postgraduate ICM training programs.

Critical features of peer assessment of clinical performance to enhance adherence to a low back pain guideline for physical therapists: a mixed methods design.

Background: Clinical practice guidelines are intended to improve the process and outcomes of patient care. However, their implementation remains a challenge. We designed an implementation strategy, based on peer assessment (PA) focusing on barriers to change in physical therapy care.

Using a Smartphone App and Coaching Group Sessions to Promote Residents' Reflection in the Workplace.

Problem: Reflecting on workplace-based experiences is necessary for professional development. However, residents need support to raise their awareness of valuable moments for learning and to thoughtfully analyze those learning moments afterwards.

Approach: From October to December 2012, the authors held a multidisciplinary six-week postgraduate training module focused on general competencies.

Effects of learning content in context on knowledge acquisition and recall: a pretest-posttest control group design.

Background: It is generally assumed that learning in context increases performance. This study investigates the relationship between the characteristics of a paper-patient context (relevance and familiarity), the mechanisms through which the cognitive dimension of context could improve learning (activation of prior knowledge, elaboration and increasing retrieval cues), and test performance.

Methods: A total of 145 medical students completed a pretest of 40 questions, of which half were with a patient vignette.

Revisiting the D-RECT tool: Validation of an instrument measuring residents' learning climate perceptions.

Introduction: Credible evaluation of the learning climate requires valid and reliable instruments in order to inform quality improvement activities. Since its initial validation the Dutch Residency Educational Climate Test (D-RECT) has been increasingly used to evaluate the learning climate, yet it has not been tested in its final form and on the actual level of use - the department.

Aim: Our aim was to re-investigate the internal validity and reliability of the D-RECT at the resident and department levels.

The reliability of multisource feedback in competency-based assessment programs: the effects of multiple occasions and assessor groups.

Purpose: Residency programs around the world use multisource feedback (MSF) to evaluate learners' performance. Studies of the reliability of MSF show mixed results. This study aimed to identify the reliability of MSF as practiced across occasions with varying numbers of assessors from different professional groups (physicians and nonphysicians) and the effect on the reliability of the assessment for different competencies when completed by both groups.

Exploring the factors influencing clinical students' self-regulated learning.

Objectives: The importance of self-regulated learning (SRL) has been broadly recognised by medical education institutions and regulatory bodies. Supporting the development of SRL skills has proven difficult because self-regulation is a complex interactive process and we know relatively little about the factors influencing this process in real practice settings. The aim of our study was therefore to identify factors that support or hamper medical students' SRL in a clinical context.

The impact of programmatic assessment on student learning: theory versus practice.

Context: It is widely acknowledged that assessment can affect student learning. In recent years, attention has been called to 'programmatic assessment', which is intended to optimise both learning functions and decision functions at the programme level of assessment, rather than according to individual methods of assessment. Although the concept is attractive, little research into its intended effects on students and their learning has been conducted.

Culture Matters in Successful Curriculum Change: An International Study of the Influence of National and Organizational Culture Tested With Multilevel Structural Equation Modeling.

Purpose: National culture has been shown to play a role in curriculum change in medical schools, and business literature has described a similar influence of organizational culture on change processes in organizations. This study investigated the impact of both national and organizational culture on successful curriculum change in medical schools internationally.

Method: The authors tested a literature-based conceptual model using multilevel structural equation modeling.