Assessment of Health Professional Education Research

ASSESSMENT OF HEALTH PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION
By
Institution
Table of Contents TOC \o "1-3" \h \z \u Executive Summary PAGEREF _Toc466301106 \h 4Assessment of Health Professional Education PAGEREF _Toc466301107 \h 5Formative assessment using wikis and blogs PAGEREF _Toc466301108 \h 5Principles of Assessment PAGEREF _Toc466301109 \h 7Formative assessment PAGEREF _Toc466301110 \h 7Summative Assessment principle PAGEREF _Toc466301111 \h 8Continuous assessment PAGEREF _Toc466301112 \h 10Methods of Assessment PAGEREF _Toc466301113 \h 10Written examinations PAGEREF _Toc466301114 \h 11Assessment by supervising nurse PAGEREF _Toc466301115 \h 12Video review or direct observation PAGEREF _Toc466301116 \h 13Clinical simulations PAGEREF _Toc466301117 \h 13Multisource (“360”) assessment PAGEREF _Toc466301118 \h 14Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) PAGEREF _Toc466301119 \h 15Short cases PAGEREF _Toc466301120 \h 16Long cases PAGEREF _Toc466301121 \h 16Portfolios PAGEREF _Toc466301122 \h 16Performance Assessment: Tools Criteria, And Feedback Mechanisms PAGEREF _Toc466301123 \h 17Checklists PAGEREF _Toc466301124 \h 17Rating scales PAGEREF _Toc466301125 \h 17Importance of feedback in assessment PAGEREF _Toc466301126 \h 18References PAGEREF _Toc466301127 \h 20
Executive Summary
Medical and nursing profession demands dealing with people’s lives that may be delicate and therefore requires special skills to actualize. The training of health professionals uses several methods to expose their competency, skills and requisite clinical behaviours. Therefore, employment of assessment methods that meet these expectations in study to ensure medical and nursing students meet their required professional standards is necessary. The preferred method of assessment I have chosen for my study includes a brief description of the feedback essays using Wikis and blogs. This essay aims to provide information on the formative and summative principles of assessments. In this assessment report, different methods of assessment shall undergo investigation for their validity and reliability in evaluation of nursing and medical students and trainees. The tools used for assessment and importance that feedback plays in the learning process informs this research. The research uses reputable sources such as online sources, journals and books to get information concerning the study.
Assessment of Health Professional Education
The stakes placed on medical and nursing students is so high; therefore, their learning and grading requires meeting the highest possible standards. The academic life of medical and nursing students prepare them to handle other people’s lives, therefore they undergo constant assessments to gauge their skills, clinical knowledge and competency. These assessment methods may be formative or summative, and give feedbacks on the students’ performance. Though they achieve in the end goal of students and trainee evaluation, these methods have specific shortcomings, and require specific correctional techniques to conceive better results.
Formative Assessment using Wikis and Blogs
Assessment is an ongoing process to understand and know what students know. There are several assessment methods to gauge a student understanding, and may utilize one technique or another to actualize this. Most of these assessment methods gives an idea of what the student knows and does not know, but does not provide students with opportunity to learn from each other or use feedback to make adjustments (Boud & Falchikov, 2007). According to Sambell, Barry, & Price (2011), assessment methods should not only measure and certify students learning, but also should progress students’ learning and sustain students’ self-assessment independent of faculty, especially after leaving formal education environment.
In this context, formative assessment aims to guide future learning of students, promote reassurance, provide reflection, and shape values (Epstein, 2007). Formative assessment, together with summative assessment should have a long-term goal of equipping students for future learning through self-assessment (Boud & Falchikov, 2007). Using essays to gauge students’ performance informs practice and pedagogy, since it shows where the student erred and learning was insufficient. By assessing outcomes via written examinations, it is easy to measure subject knowledge, writing skills and critical thinking skills required in the nursing field.
Essays provide a more direct way for students to demonstrate their knowledge of the material or subject. Their arguments, examples, analyses, and conclusions depict their greatest understanding of a topic, subject, or practical activity (Battaglia, 2016). The level of structure and organization of thought, and the degree of critical thinking employed by a student in an essay aids in showing the level of preparation and the ability of the student to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant information (Battaglia, 2016). Essay writing, as an example of written assessment, meets the module outcome as it prepares nursing students for their professional life, where individuals are required to be team players and able to address different audiences.
The use of Wikis and blogs is easy and popular among many people. Wikis are essentially effective since people can easily alter, edit and contribute to these sources (Boulos, Maramba, & Wheeler, 2006). They also provide document files, audio and video files, which people can download and use. Wikis and blogs provide an effective way of enhancing learning and participation among clinicians and patients. The method is effective as these resources can be accessed any place any time. Schwartz (2014) showed that use of Wikis and blogs help students to achieve better grades because of fast feedback and peer-to-peer reviews. Furthermore, the public nature of Wikis and blogs allow student to be more responsible, authoritative and promote academic integrity.
In this method of assessment, students write essays depending on the given topic and post to these websites, which provide a public access to all the work done. This method combines the ease of technological advances with the interactive and participatory activities offered by the traditional learning systems (Thorne, 2003). Students then get a real time feedback on their works from an assessor, and are able to comment on other people’s work (Boulos et al. 2006). Therefore, use of essay of feedback as a form of assessment in wikis and blogs, is effective since students are careful on what they post and keen on what others do (Schwartz, 2014). This also enables students to do their best and provide quality output to compete favourably with others. Additionally, students become more careful on their reference sources and are more fastidious (Schwartz, 2014). Apart from offering online libraries, ease of feedback, improvement in presentation, some experts have cited reduction in quality in online assessment (Fallows & Bhanot, 2005).
Principles of Assessment
The methods of assessing learners differ in terms of the principles applied during the assessment process and the expected results of the assessment (Gijbels, Dochy, Segers & Bossche, 2005). The criteria for assessment and the purpose of carrying the assessment determine how these assessment practices and processes are undertaken. These principles include:
Formative assessment principle
The formative assessment process guides the progress of a student towards a specific goal by providing information in an expedient manner, to aid student in making appropriate decisions and corrections (Derell, 2015). It shows the students the standards they ought to achieve and their current position, and guides them towards gaping that discrepancy (Sambell et al., 2011). The formative assessment uses feedbacks to make informed decisions concerning the academic needs of the student. The formative assessment does not use grading system to evaluate the performance of the student, but rather the outcome of tests to instruct the students appropriately.
The formative assessment exposes the strengths and weaknesses of the student and highlight areas of improvement, while showing the faculty the areas the student is struggling and areas that require improvements (Norman, Shannon & Marrin, 2005). These types of tests are low stakes, requiring low or no point in evaluations. Formative assessment provides the principle of allowing the students to learn from their mistakes (Surgenor, 2010). This allows students to be more experimental and challenge preconceived ideas to come up with better cognitive skills. This requires designing the courses to such that the students understand the purpose of their course and the ultimate goal of their study (Surgenor, 2010). Example of formative assessment is the submission of a research proposal for timely feedback, conference, or graphical diagram.
Summative Assessment principle
This type of assessment usually occurs at the end of the course and may apply only once (Derrell, 2015). The faculty uses summative assessments to check to the comprehension of learning standards, and include specific grading. Summative assessments have higher stakes because they cover a wider scope and gauges erudition that occurred over a long time. The questions in this assessment type are of low ranges such as essays, multiple questions and short answers (Derrell, 2015). Examples of summative assessments include the end of semester exams, end of term exams, and capstone projects among others.
According to Surgenor (2010), the summative assessment includes a collection of tests which are aggregated to assess whether the students has fulfilled learning goals and qualified for accreditation. The results are final and can affect the future of students, so they cause anxiety among the students. In the summative assessments, students are economical with ideas and thought, preferring to give the answer they are required to give instead of experimenting with answers (Surgenor, 2010). However, the information from summative assessment can be in use formatively to guide the students and faculty on the oncoming courses.
The formative and summative assessments share several similarities. According to Derrell (2015), both summative a formative assessment requires careful planning and thought on the kind of skill or knowledge to measure. Both assessments leads to assortment of data required for highlighting the students’ weaknesses and the areas requiring more input (Derrell, 2015).
In the medical and nursing profession, the students undergo thorough assessment to test their competency and skill. This is requisite to the type of work they shall undertake in future. The evaluation criteria using summative assessment makes it useful in evaluating whether they are ready for the practical life. These assessments comprise professionalism, caring for patients, communication, medical understanding, practicality in learning, interpersonal skills, and system-based practice, and should entail knowledge acquisition and practice development, not entirely on gaining marks (Boud & Falchikov, 2006). Competency in nursing and medical should be habitual, and assessment therefore acts to enable the learners respond to their learning need and create this habit (Epstein, 2007).
Additionally, assessment aids the medical and nursing students to gauge their actual performance, their flexibility to change, improve general performance, and provide new knowledge (Epstein, 2007). Competence based assessment reflects the relationship between a person and the task assigned. Competence based assessment in nursing is widely used because it is developmental: gaining of wisdom and knowledge is through practice and deliberate reflection of experience (West, Park, Purmeroy & Sundeval, 2002). Competence-based assessment in nursing prepares individuals who shall make deliberate decisions devoid of errors in ambiguous situations.
Continuous assessment
This type of assessment usually comprise of a series of tasks requiring individual assessment. These assessments occur several times whenever there exist modules requiring accomplishment at different stages of the learning season. Continuous assessment helps in reducing the burden on summative assessment, by distributing tasks over time. The assessment is formative in nature in the manner students are evaluated while they are learning (Clarkson, 2003). However, when the outcome of this evaluation is graded, it becomes summative. In nursing, this may occur during practical sessions or when students are on attachment where their performance undergoes constant evaluation.
Methods of Assessment
There are several methods for assessing students taking medical and nursing courses. These methods though, have several advantages and flaws as well. According to Epstein (2007), there are several criteria of selecting the best method of assessment such as reliability, validity, outcome in practice, and future learning, ease of use by learners and faculty, effect on learners and faculty, and cost. Boud and Falchikov (2007) argue that, assessment should have a long-term focus of preparing students for future learning, independent of their teachers. Therefore, the best method of assessment should be affordable to the stakeholders, accurate in bringing assessment results, reproducible, and dependable. These methods include:
Written examinations
These types of examinations can be either multiple-choice or open-ended and may contain rich or poor context. In this context, questions rich in clinical context require higher cognitive processes requisite in clinical practice. Questions having poor context are mainly for provision of basic assessment or general knowledge. Multiple questions are highly preferred since they allow setting questions covering many subjects, can be graded using the computer, and are fast to administer (Walubo et al., 2003). Al-Wardy (2010) adds that multiple questions containing short answer choices may help “to test clinical decision-making skills with demonstrated validity and reliability when constructed according to certain guidelines”.
Multiple question examination may include a popular format where students are required to select an appropriate answer from a number of given options. Multiple-choice exams have ability to incorporate formats such as script concordance for assessing students for critical thinking and knowledge in clinical practice (Epstein, 2007). Contextualizing the tests by including queries depicting clinical and laboratory scenarios may aid in supplying important information and convey validity and authenticity (Al-Wardy, 2010). Multiple questions have several disadvantages. Those rich in context tend to be difficult and students who answer them usually avoid several topics. Multiple question examination are difficult to construct and may suffer from cueing and technical error (Amin, Chong, & Khoo, 2006).
Using open-ended questions or extended multiple matching items can aid in eliminating cueing. They may incorporate use of clinical vignettes to gauge the trainees’ critical thinking and med...