Assessment tools

The Faculty uses a mix of assessment tools to assess the achievement of the goals and objectives of the medical program. These tools are valid, reliable and practicable.

Written Assessments

The Single Best Answer (SBA) format of multiple choice questions and Modified Essay Questions (MEQ) are used in the written assessments in the program, with minimal use of longer essay format.

SBA questions require students to choose the single best answer from the options provided to the stated question. Single best answer questions consist of a stem and four alternative answers. More than one answer may be correct. Students are required to use their judgement to select the one best or most likely answer to the question.

The modified essay question paper requires students to work through a patient case in a sequential manner (much like a Problem Based Learning tutorial). The case usually begins with a brief description of a patient's presenting complaint. With this patient information are one or more questions requiring answers in short essay form, point form or by using a flow diagram. The first question usually asks students to generate a list of hypotheses to explain the nature of the patient's problem.

Subsequent pages of the MEQ case provide students with additional information about the patient (e.g. further history and/or physical examination findings). Students may also be asked what treatment they will give this patient.

Clinical Assessments

Objective Structured Clinical Assessments (OSCE), Structured History and Physical Examinations (SHAPE) and Long Cases are used to assess students' achievement of clinical skills.

OSCEs are objective clinical assessments in which students' history taking, physical examination and procedural skills are assessed at a series of short stations (less than 10 minutes each). The advantages of using OSCEs in clinical assessment include the potential for assessing a broad range of skills over a number of stations.

SHAPEs are used in formative clinical assessments for students to review their history taking and physical examination skills with the objective of integrating these two clinical tasks and receive immediate feedback from their tutor.

Long Cases assess student performance in eliciting and integrating a patient history, physical examination and basic investigations and as a consequence develop an appropriate clinical summary. The clinical summary includes developing a diagnosis, differential diagnosis and problem list to be presented to a senior clinician.