Author: Rebecca Maldonado

Publisher:

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 27

ISBN-13:

Medical programs, which are responsible for educating health professionals, have also been charged with the task of evaluating their students' fitness to practice medicine. This task is never more difficult than during the clinical education phase of training. In 1979, the American Association of Medical Colleges undertook a study to look at the clinical evaluation of students. Within the top five problems listed by clerkship coordinators, were the following: 1)Clinical faculty's unwillingness to record negative evaluations, 2)a lack of training of evaluators, and 3)criteria for evaluation ill defined. Now, almost twenty years after the study was published, educating health professionals is still hampered by the same problems. Within physician assistant programs, the problem exists as well. There are not any studies analyzing clerkship problems within physician assistanct (PA) programs. However, clerkship coordinators frequently discuss problems with preceptor's evaluations at educational conferences as well as in on-line discussion groups. Without effective evaluation methods during clinical clerkships or rotations, the student who is not prepared to practice medicine is liekely to graduate despite their inability to practice medicine. The student may also be identified so late in the educational process that effective remediation is not feasible. The purpose of this project is to compare the current clinical evaluation for (CEF) for Western University of Health Sciences Physician Assistant program with a new evaluation form which addresses some of the problems existing in student evaluation during the clinical phase of health care training. The traditional evaluation form is designed for the clinical preceptor to assign a grade to the student, indicating the student's abilities in history taking, physical exam skills, diagnosis formulation and management plans as satidfactory or unsatifactory. (See appendix A) The new evaluation form consists of defined criteria for clinical skills and professional attributes rated on a Likert scale. The final student grade is assigned by the physician assistant program based on the number of points received. (See appendix B) The research question- is there a statistically significant difference between the letter grades assigned to our students by their preceptors vs. the points acheived on objectively-defined criteria for clinical skills and professional attributes? The null hypothesis of this research states there would not be a statistically significant difference between grades received. The alternative hypothesis is that there would be a statistically significant difference. A study published in 1995 for medical students demonstrated that clinical grades drop an average of 6% when grade assignments are done by the program based on objective-criteria supplied by the clinical preceptor. Based on that study, an anticipated drop in the student's grade when calculated using the objective Likert scale CEF should be demonstrated.