Definition of Frames
Assessment of Knowledge and Reasoning involves typical classroom testing of student learning. Often these assessments are associated with assigning marks or course grades. Usually, paper testing is the method of convenience, with reliance on MCQ formats preferred. Longitudinal comprehensive assessment would usually be accommodated here as well.
Assessment of Clinical Skills concerns selected aspects of clinical performance, some of which may be related to physical examination manoeuvres (detecting heart murmurs) or therapeutic procedures (inserting Swann-Ganz line) or interpersonal skills (eliciting a focused history of recent illness). Usually these assessments require higher-fidelity simulations associated with OSCE, SP, computer-based, or mechanical devices and mannequins. Oral examinations with short or long cases may be considered to fall within this frame as well. Checklists and ratings scales are almost always required, and administration almost invariably occurs in special settings.
Assessment of Workplace Performance is more often invoked for issues involving graduate doctors and practitioners where naturalistic observation may be called into play. Assessment instruments will more likely relate to collecting observational data, but there may be augmentation with systematic data-gathering from indirect measures, such as, chart audits or review of SOAP notes. It is likely that multiple assessments may be more frequent in this frame.
Assessment of Programs occurs most commonly when curriculum changes of any dimension are contemplated, or have been implemented, and there is a need to document the results of the changes. Here the scale of the assessment is conceivably very large, involving multiple measures of different facets of the institutional environment, possibly undertaken over an extended period of time. This frame may also call for careful documentation of activity without any necessary assessment character, as when faculty teaching is monitored to gather data about the extent of implementation of a program change. As a consequence of all these factors, this frame is likely to be encountered less commonly.
| <Home |