Essential steps in the development, implementation, evaluation and quality assurance of the written part of the Swiss federal licensing examination for human medicine.

Purpose: This report describes the essential steps in the development, implementation, evaluation and quality assurance of the written part of the Swiss Federal Licensing Examination for Human Medicine (FLE) and the insights gained since its introduction in 2011.

Methods: Based on existing scientific evidence, international expertise, and experience gained from previous examinations, the FLE is developed by experts from all five medical faculties in Switzerland with the support of the Institute for Medical Education and is held simultaneously at five locations. The exam organisers document and review every examination held and continuously optimise the processes; they have summarised the results in this report.

Development and national consensus finding on patient-centred high stakes communication skills assessments for the Swiss Federal Licensing Examination in Medicine.

Objective: To describe and evaluate a consensus finding and expert validation process for the development of patient-centred communication assessments for a national Licensing Exam in Medicine.

Methods: A multi-professional team of clinicians and experts in communication, assessment and role-play developed communication assessments for the Swiss Federal Licensing Examination. The six-month process, informed by a preceding national needs-assessment, an expert symposium and a critical literature review covered the application of patient-centred communication frameworks, the development of assessment guides, concrete assessments and pilot-tests.

Measurement precision at the cut score in medical multiple choice exams: Theory matters.

Introduction: In high-stakes assessment, the measurement precision of pass-fail decisions is of great importance. A concept for analyzing the measurement precision at the cut score is conditional reliability, which describes measurement precision for every score achieved in an exam. We compared conditional reliabilities in Classical Test Theory (CTT) and Item Response Theory (IRT) with a special focus on the cut score and potential factors influencing conditional reliability at the cut score.

Great project management=IT success.

Discover how creating a formal project management office can help a health care organization achieve on-time information technology projects that stay within their budgets.

Demand management in healthcare IT. Controlling IT demand to meet constrained IT resource supply.

Healthcare is behind other industries in the ability to manage and control increasing demand for IT services, and to ensure that IT staff are available when and where needed. From everyday support requests to large capital projects, the IT department's ability to meet demand is limited. Organizational and IT leaders need to proactively address this issue and do a better job of predicting when services will be needed and whether appropriate resources will be available.