Measuring situation awareness in medical education objective structured clinical examination guides

A few words about this paper…

This paper was written by two undergraduate medical students. This is another good example of student participation in undergraduate medical education research. John and Margaret performed a pilot according to Markus’s initial observation that aspects of Situation Awareness could be measured in OSCEs. Both students used the station OSCE score-sheets of three freely available OSCE training guides, and addressed what was already proclaimed by Markus: that all three aspects of SA can be identified in an OSCE score-sheet, although not developed as such. As John and Margaret correctly addressed, it was ‘easy to do’, but reliability and validity was still an issue as this type of research was never done before. It was the step-up for Markus after his literature research to design and conduct his PhD track developing a consecutive training on how to assess SA using OSCE score-sheets. Unfortunately, this breaking news appears hard to publish and maybe we are a bit ahead of the music. This paper however, provides good insight into how important SA is in training and assessing students at an early stage of their curriculum.   read more

Situational awareness within objective structured clinical examination stations in undergraduate medical training – A literature search

A few words about this paper…

A great new PhD track was launched with Markus Fischer’s idea to look into situation awareness (SA). The latter term is known from the aviation industry and requires pilots to be aware of all critical situations that may occur while flying a plane. More and more evidence is emerging to suggest SA is also applicable to medicine (particularly emergency medicine and surgery). However, the question arose whether we can find any similarities in OSCE stations that might not be designed to detect SA, but which contain item descriptors that could be linked to three different types of SA. Markus Fischer’s first paper provides insight in the literature on situational awareness and OSCEs. A pretty advanced subject that just recently received it’s first citation. I am sure there are more to come once Dr Fischer’s other papers are published.  read more

Assessment of professional behaviour – A comparison of self-assessment by first year dental students and assessment by staff

Authors

S Zijlstra-Shaw, Thomas JB Kropmans and J Tams 

Abstract

Objective

A study was set up to assess usefulness and acceptability of a method of assessing professional behaviour of undergraduate dental students.

Setting

The first year preclinical course at the Department of Dentistry and Oral Hygiene, University of Groningen, the Netherlands.

Materials and Method

A form was developed with an ordinal scale to assess undergraduate professional behaviour. A standard means of carrying out assessment was then undertaken and subsequently used to give feedback to the students at the end of each of three terms. The students’ self-assessment was then compared to that of the staff. read more

Assessment of ‘borderline’ clinical competence using generalisability and decision studies in dental skills training

A few words about this paper…

A historically significant paper I have to say, and although not yet cited it formed the basis of what I eventually pursued for the last 10 years in the spin-off company, Qpercom.  According to the Irish Times, we are “dragging exam assessment out of the dark ages“ (Oct. 2016). This suppressed paper actually forms the basis of what Qpercom has worked to achieve since 2008 with client partners worldwide. From being a PT clinician by training, I moved into medical education. As clinical researchers, we put a lot of effort into developing the Smallest Detectable Difference (SDD), to be detected using a ‘ruler’. Measuring maximal mouth opening with a metal ruler is one of the outcome variables in patients with maxillofacial pain. With the newly acquired evidence that you had to measure at least 12 mm difference in mouth opening before and after an intervention to be successful in patients with temporomandibular joint disc displacement, I changed jobs and moved into medical/dental education. I was immediately challenged to look into comparable measurements used in oral hygiene training. Probing depth measurements were used as an example to demonstrate the use of generalisability and decision studies in educational decision-making. Fourteen years after this publication, we are comparing 10 different European Universities on their quality assurance outcome of OSCEs. Have a read, use the evidence, and I hope this will help students and staff measuring any kind of assessment outcome, plus this historically significant paper needs citations! read more

Borderline Regression Analysis in Assessment

Borderline regression analysis (BRA) is an absolute, examinee-centered standard setting method widely used to standard set OSCE exams, Yousuf, Violato, and Zuberi (2015). Candidates are awarded a “global score” for a station in a circuit, based on the examiner’s professional judgment of their ability.

Borderline Regression Method is illustrated above using item score on the Y-axis and Global Ratings on the X-axis. 0=Fail, 1=Borderline, 2=Pass, 3=Good and 4=Excellent.

For a working example, in Qpercom’s OSCE Management Information System, Observe, three different types of Borderline Regression Analysis are available:  read more