Assessment Tools for Feedback and Entrustment Decisions in the Clinical Workplace: A Systematic Review.

Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs) combine feedback and evaluation with a permission to act under a specified level of supervision and the possibility to schedule learners for clinical service. This literature review aims to identify workplace-based assessment tools that indicate progression toward unsupervised practice, suitable for entrustment decisions and feedback to learners. A systematic search was performed in the PubMed, Embase, ERIC, and PsycINFO databases.

Increasing Authenticity of Simulation-Based Assessment in Diagnostic Radiology.

Introduction: Clinical reasoning in diagnostic imaging professions is a complex skill that requires processing of visual information and image manipulation skills. We developed a digital simulation-based test method to increase authenticity of image interpretation skill assessment.

Methods: A digital application, allowing volumetric image viewing and manipulation, was used for three test administrations of the national Dutch Radiology Progress Test for residents.

The Effect of Teaching Search Strategies on Perceptual Performance.

Rationale And Objectives: Radiology expertise is dependent on the use of efficient search strategies. The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of teaching search strategies on trainee's accuracy in detecting lung nodules at computed tomography.

Materials And Methods: Two search strategies, "scanning" and "drilling," were tested with a randomized crossover design.

Tests, Quizzes, and Self-Assessments: How to Construct a High-Quality Examination.

Objective: The purposes of this article are to highlight aspects of tests that increase or decrease their effectiveness and to provide guidelines for constructing high-quality tests in radiology.

Conclusion: Many radiologists help construct tests for a variety of purposes. Only well-constructed tests can provide reliable and valuable information about the test taker.

Volumetric and two-dimensional image interpretation show different cognitive processes in learners.

Rationale And Objectives: In current practice, radiologists interpret digital images, including a substantial amount of volumetric images. We hypothesized that interpretation of a stack of a volumetric data set demands different skills than interpretation of two-dimensional (2D) cross-sectional images. This study aimed to investigate and compare knowledge and skills used for interpretation of volumetric versus 2D images.

Volumetric CT-images improve testing of radiological image interpretation skills.

Rationale And Objectives: Current radiology practice increasingly involves interpretation of volumetric data sets. In contrast, most radiology tests still contain only 2D images. We introduced a new testing tool that allows for stack viewing of volumetric images in our undergraduate radiology program.

Framing of feedback impacts student's satisfaction, self-efficacy and performance.

Feedback is considered important to acquire clinical skills. Research evidence shows that feedback does not always improve learning and its effects may be small. In many studies, a variety of variables involved in feedback provision may mask either one of their effects.

Feedback providers' credibility impacts students' satisfaction with feedback and delayed performance.

Purpose: Medical students receive feedback during clerkships from many different sources: attendings, residents, paramedics, other clerks and even patients. Not all feedback providers have similar impact on learning. One characteristic that is believed to have impact is their credibility to the recipient.

A case for competency-based anaesthesiology training with entrustable professional activities: an agenda for development and research.

Competency frameworks are based on what are considered to be the general essential qualities of a doctor. Competencies, being behavioural descriptors, need a strong link to clinical practice to allow trainers to observe and then use them in assessing trainees' performance. The emerging concept of entrustable professional activities (EPAs) may serve as such a link.

A comparison of medical and pharmacy students' knowledge and skills of pharmacology and pharmacotherapy.

Aim: Pharmacotherapy might be improved if future pharmacists and physicians receive a joint educational programme in pharmacology and pharmacotherapeutics. This study investigated whether there are differences in the pharmacology and pharmacotherapy knowledge and skills of pharmacy and medical students after their undergraduate training. Differences could serve as a starting point from which to develop joint interdisciplinary educational programmes for better prescribing.

[Career preferences among medical students].

Objective: Research on the preference of medical specialty among medical students in the Netherlands and the attractiveness of aspects of the medical profession during the period 2009-2013.

Design: Retrospective, descriptive research.

Method: Data from medical students in the Netherlands who participated in the computer programme Inventory Medical Professionals Choice (IMBK) were analyzed with respect to their preference of medical specialty and the attractiveness of various aspects of the medical profession.

Online formative tests linked to microlectures improving academic achievement.

Background: Online formative tests (OFTs) are powerful tools to direct student learning behavior, especially when enriched with specific feedback.

Aim: In the present study, we have investigated the effect of OFTs enriched with hyperlinks to microlectures on examination scores.

Methods: OFTs, available one week preceding each midterm and the final exams, could be used voluntarily.

Effects of two different instructional formats on scores and reliability of a script concordance test.

The script concordance test (SCT) is designed to assess clinical reasoning by adapting the likelihood of a case diagnosis, based on provided new information. In the standard instructions students are asked to exclude alternative diagnoses they have in mind when answering the questions, but it might be more authentic to include these. Fifty-nine final-year medical students completed an SCT.

Why receiving feedback collides with self determination.

Providing feedback to trainees in clinical settings is considered important for development and acquisition of skill. Despite recommendations how to provide feedback that have appeared in the literature, research shows that its effectiveness is often disappointing. To understand why receiving feedback is more difficult than it appears, this paper views the feedback process through the lens of Self-Determination Theory (SDT).

Geriatric pharmacology and pharmacotherapy education for health professionals and students: a systematic review.

What Is Already Known About This Subject: The rate of medication errors is high, and these errors can cause adverse drug reactions. Elderly individuals are most vulnerable to adverse drug reactions. One cause of medication errors is the lack of drug knowledge on the part of different health professionals.

Impact of teaching and assessment format on electrocardiogram interpretation skills.

Objectives: Interpretation of the electrocardiogram (ECG) is a core clinical skill that should be developed in undergraduate medical education. This study assessed whether small-group peer teaching is more effective than lectures in enhancing medical students' ECG interpretation skills. In addition, the impact of assessment format on study outcome was analysed.

Vertical integration in medical school: effect on the transition to postgraduate training.

Objectives: Recently, many medical schools' curricula have been revised so that they represent vertically integrated (VI) curricula. Important changes include: the provision of earlier clinical experience; longer clerkships, and the fostering of increasing levels of responsibility. One of the aims of vertical integration is to facilitate the transition to postgraduate training.

The clinical skills assessment for international medical graduates in The Netherlands.

Aim: A need was felt to improve the quality of admission and licensing procedures for international medical graduates in The Netherlands.

Method: A clinical skills assessment was designed as part of a new procedure to realize a high-stakes, fair, transparent, and a time-limited path of admission for international medical graduates to the Dutch health care system. Additionally, it should provide a well-founded advice about length and content of additional medical training, should this be indicated by the outcome of the assessment.

The influence of a vertically integrated curriculum on the transition to postgraduate training.

Background: Recently, many medical curricula have been changed into vertically integrated programmes. One of the aims of vertical integration is to facilitate the transition from theoretical to clinical education and from medical school to postgraduate training.

Aims: The aim of this study was to determine whether a vertically integrated curriculum affects the transition from medical school to postgraduate training.

The influence of early clinical experiences on career preference of male and female medical students.

Background: Clinical experience is considered to affect medical students' career preferences. It is not known whether the sequence of the clinical rotations influences these preferences.

Aim: To explore whether the first clinical clerkship has more impact on career preference than the second by examining the association between the first clinical clerkship and the choice of an elective sixth-year internship.

[A new, problem oriented medicine curriculum in Utrecht: less basic science knowledge].

Objective: To investigate whether the transition from a conventional, discipline-based curriculum to a problem-orientated, integrated curriculum at the University Medical Center Utrecht, the Netherlands, has resulted in students having less knowledge of the basic medical sciences.

Design: Comparative.

Method: The difference in the amount of basic science between the curricula was quantitatively assessed.

The effect of the APLS-course on self-efficacy and its relationship to behavioural decisions in paediatric resuscitation.

Aims: Self-efficacy may predict performance following life-support training but may be negatively influenced by experiences during training. To investigate both this and the use of self-efficacy in self-assessment we investigated the relationship between self-efficacy and measured performance during a simulated resuscitation, and the effect of death of a simulated patient on self-efficacy.

Materials And Methods: Consultant and trainee paediatricians and anaesthesiologists scored their self-efficacy for paediatric resuscitation skills before taking an unannounced simulated resuscitation test and objective structured clinical examination (OSCE)-tests of chest compressions and bag- and mask-ventilation.

Growth of analytical thinking skills over time as measured with the MATCH test.

Context: Ber's Comprehensive Integrative Puzzle aims to assess analytical clinical thinking in medical students. We developed a paediatric version, the MATCH test, in which we added two irrelevant options to each question in order to reduce guessing behaviour. We tested its construct validity and studied the development of integrative skills over time.

Validity of the visual analogue scale as an instrument to measure self-efficacy in resuscitation skills.

Context: Self-efficacy is an important factor in many areas of medical education, including self-assessment and self-directed learning, but has been little studied in resuscitation training, possibly because of the lack of a simple measurement instrument.

Objective: We aimed to assess the validity of a visual analogue scale (VAS) linked to a single question as an instrument to measure self-efficacy with respect to resuscitation skills by comparing the VAS with a questionnaire and using known-groups comparisons.

Methods: We developed questionnaires to measure self-efficacy for a number of resuscitation tasks and for computer skills.