Assessment in Medical Education and Training : A Practical Guide

Assessment is a key method of improving standards as well as establishing competency. However, despite major developments in the assessment of clinical competence, there is still bad practice and ignorance of significant issues in this area than any other aspect of medical higher education. This book covers all aspects of assessment.

This work contains a foreword by Dame Lesley Southgate, President, Royal Free and University College Medical School, London. Assessment is a key method of improving standards as well as establishing competency. However, despite major developments in the assessment of clinical competence in the last two decades, there is still more bad practice and ignorance of significant issues in this area than any other aspect of medical higher education. This book comprehensively covers all aspects of assessment. It considers current and future policy and practice, including the Modernising Medical Careers training programme; it promotes a system incorporating more meaningful assessments, rather than just ''tests'' of knowledge and skill. "Assessment in Medical Education and Training" will be useful to everyone involved in healthcare education, including tutors, trainers, clinical supervisors and assessors in both primary and secondary care. It will also be important reading for consultants and general practitioners with responsibility for registrars, and healthcare education policy makers and shapers. ''Acquisition of knowledge and skills is not sufficient alone; we need to be able to apply the knowledge, skills and strategies learnt, and in turn these can be the appropriate targets of assessment. There is a movement away from traditional, multiple-choice tests to assessments that include a wide variety of methods and so provide for more meaningful assessments which can better capture significant outcomes in order to assure their future success.'' - Neil Jackson, Alex Jamieson and Anwar Khan, in the Introduction. ''This thoughtful, provocative and eclectic book is published at a time of enormous change in the content, structure and quality assurance of postgraduate medical education in the United Kingdom. The reader will be challenged and stimulated by the variety of views and emphases. Essential.'' - Dame Lesley Southgate, in the Foreword.