Assessing the growth in clinical skills using a progress clinical skills examination.

Background: This study evaluates the generalizability of an eight-station progress clinical skills examination and assesses the growth in performance for six clinical skills domains among first- and second-year medical students over four time points during the academic year.

Methods: We conducted a generalizability study for longitudinal and cross-sectional comparisons and assessed growth in six clinical skill domains via repeated measures ANOVA over the first and second year of medical school.

Results: The generalizability of the examination domain scores was low but consistent with previous studies of data gathering and communication skills.

Attendance, engagement and performance in a medical school curriculum: early findings from competency-based progress testing in a new medical school curriculum.

Introduction: Medical students often do not value attending in-person large group sessions. It is also not clear from prior research whether attendance at large group sessions impact on performance in medical school. The goal of this study was to assess the relationship between voluntary attendance in large group sessions organized as a "flipped classroom" in a new innovative curriculum and students' mastery of clinical applications of basic science knowledge.

A survey of authors publishing in four megajournals.

Aim. To determine the characteristics of megajournal authors, the nature of the manuscripts they are submitting to these journals, factors influencing their decision to publish in a megajournal, sources of funding for article processing charges (APCs) or other fees and their likelihood of submitting to a megajournal in the future. Methods.

Glycohemoglobin A1c: A promising screening tool in gestational diabetes mellitus.

Context: Current screening tests for gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) are inconvenient. Therefore, alternative screening tests for GDM are desirable. The use of glycohemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) in screening for GDM remains controversial.

Sources of measurement error in an ECG examination: implications for performance-based assessments.

Objective: To assess the sources of measurement error in an electrocardiogram (ECG) interpretation examination given in a third-year internal medicine clerkship.

Design: Three successive generalizability studies were conducted. (1) Multiple faculty rated student responses to a previously administered exam.

A randomized trial comparing digital and live lecture formats [ISRCTN40455708.

Background: Medical education is increasingly being conducted in community-based teaching sites at diverse locations, making it difficult to provide a consistent curriculum. We conducted a randomized trial to assess whether students who viewed digital lectures would perform as well on a measure of cognitive knowledge as students who viewed live lectures. Students' perceptions of the digital lecture format and their opinion as whether a digital lecture format could serve as an adequate replacement for live lectures was also assessed.

Using a formative simulated patient exercise for curriculum evaluation.

Background: It is not clear that teaching specific history taking, physical examination and patient teaching techniques to medical students results in durable behavioural changes. We used a quasi-experimental design that approximated a randomized double blinded trial to examine whether a Participatory Decision-Making (PDM) educational module taught in a clerkship improves performance on a Simulated Patient Exercise (SPE) in another clerkship, and how this is influenced by the time between training and assessment.

Methods: Third year medical students in an internal medicine clerkship were assessed on their use of PDM skills in an SPE conducted in the second week of the clerkship.

The rating reliability calculator.

Background: Rating scales form an important means of gathering evaluation data. Since important decisions are often based on these evaluations, determining the reliability of rating data can be critical. Most commonly used methods of estimating reliability require a complete set of ratings i.

Global Ratings of Student Performance in a Standardized Patient Examination: Is the Whole More than the Sum of the Parts?

Standardized patient examinations (SPE) are widely used in medical education to assess skills that cannot be measured with written examinations. Trained actors termed standardized patients (SPs) are used to simulate patients with specific medical problems. SPs typically use behaviorally specific checklists and rating scales to evaluate examinees.