Evaluating the UK's first national prescribing assessment for GPs in training using an online survey.

Background: GP trainees may not have experienced a systematic and comprehensive education in safe prescribing. Therefore, a self-assessment prescribing review was developed.

Aim: To determine whether the assessment was feasible, had face validity, and did not disadvantage particular groups of participants.

Consistency and reliability of judgements by assessors of case based discussions in general practice specialty training programmes in the United Kingdom.

Case based discussions (CbDs) are a mandatory workplace assessment used throughout general practitioner (GP) specialty training; they contribute to the annual review of competence progression (ARCP) for each trainee. This study examined the judgements arising from CbDs made by different groups of assessors and whether or not these assessments supported ARCP decisions. The trainees selected were at the end of their first year of GP training and had been identified during their ARCPs to need extra training time.

Is there a value to case-based discussion?

Case-based discussion (CbD) is a workplace-based assessment which is used formatively to help develop a GP trainee's performance and which will also contribute to the judgement made on a trainee's competence at the end of their training. The views of GP trainers and trainee's in their final year of training were explored quantitively to identify if CbD was of value, its limitations and whether or not it could assess a trainee's performance. The results suggest as an isolated assessment it is not possible to fully assess performance.