Inherent in every clinical preceptor's role is the ability to understand the learning needs of individual trainees, enabling them to meet their potential. Competency-based medical education frameworks have been developed to this end, but efforts to identify behaviours and activities that define competence are based on mapping knowledge, skills and…

Competency-based assessment is undergoing an evolution with the popularisation of programmatic assessment. Fundamental to programmatic assessment are the attributes and buy-in of the people participating in the system. Our previous research revealed unspoken, yet influential, cultural and relationship dynamics that interact with programmatic…

Scholarly practitioners are broadly defined as healthcare professionals that address critical practice problems using theory, scientific evidence, and practice-based knowledge. Though scholarly practice is included in most competency frameworks, it is unclear what scholarly practice "is," how it "develops" and how it is…

The Ottawa Surgical Competency Operating Room Evaluation (OSCORE) is an assessment tool that has gained prominence in postgraduate competency-based training programs. We undertook a systematic review and narrative synthesis to articulate the underlying validity argument in support of this tool. Although originally developed to assess readiness for…

Surgeons practice their own variations on a procedure. Residents experience shifting thresholds between variations that one surgeon holds firmly as principle and another takes more lightly as preference. Such variability has implications for surgical education, but the impact is not well understood. This is a critical problem to investigate as…

The development of competence among student nurses is important to nurse educators, nursing regulatory bodies, employers and patients. Several teaching and learning strategies support the development of competence among student nurses, but the level of competence at the point of graduation remains below expected standards. Therefore, more research…

The centrality of entrustable professional activities (EPAs) in competency-based medical education (CBME) is predicated on the assumption that low-stakes, high-frequency workplace-based assessments used in a programmatic approach will result in accurate and defensible judgments of competence. While there have been conversations in the literature…

Assessing competence is a tremendous challenge in medical education. There are two contrasting approaches in competence assessment: an analytic approach that aims to precisely measure observable constituents and facets of competence and a holistic approach that focuses on a comprehensive assessment of competences in complex real situations…

More than 100 years ago, Osler inspired educators to consider health professions education (HPE) as intricately reliant on patients. Since that time, patient involvement in HPE has taken on many different meanings. The result is a disparate body of literature that is challenging to search, making it difficult to determine how to continue to build…

Criticisms about psychometric paradigms currently used in healthcare professions education include claims of reductionism, objectification, and poor compliance with assumptions. Nevertheless, perhaps the most crucial criticism comes from learners' difficulty in interpreting and making meaningful use of summative scores and the potentially…

In postgraduate medical education, required competencies are described in detail in existing competency frameworks. This study proposes an alternative strategy for competency-based medical education design, which is supported by change management theories. We demonstrate the value of allowing room for re-invention and creative adaptation of…

Educational assessment for the health professions has seen a major attempt to introduce competency based frameworks. As high level policy developments, the changes were intended to improve outcomes by supporting learning and skills development. However, we argue that previous experiences with major innovations in assessment offer an important road…

Learner handover (LH), the process of sharing of information about learners between faculty supervisors, allows for longitudinal assessment fundamental in the competency-based education model. However, the potential to bias future assessments has been raised as a concern. The purpose of this study is to determine whether prior performance…

Direct observation of clinical skills is central to assessment in a competency-based medical education model, yet little is known about how direct observation is experienced by trainees and observers. The objective of the study is to explore how direct observation was experienced by residents and faculty in the context of the I-PASS Handoff Study.…

Arguably, constructive alignment has been the major challenge for assessment in the context of problem-based learning (PBL). PBL focuses on promoting abilities such as clinical reasoning, team skills and metacognition. PBL also aims to foster self-directed learning and deep learning as opposed to rote learning. This has incentivized researchers in…