Use of monitoring techniques at Long Island Jewish-Hillside Medical Center has revealed that young physicians have multiple defects in their interviewing and physical diagnosis skills: errors of technique, omission, detection, interpretation, and recording. Methods developed and utilized over the past three years to teach, monitor, correct and…

A methodology for developing behavioral checklists to assess the techniques of performing a physical examination is described. Behavioral checklists seem to avoid the problems associated with rating scales since they require a minimum degree of subjective judgment on the part of observers. The results of validity and reliability studies are…

Results of a survey support the statement that pediatricians have a negative attitude toward the pediatric nurse practitioner (PNP) in South Carolina, generally due to the physicians' feelings that the PNP is not competent at child illness management. Implications for pediatric residencies are discussed. (LBH)

The American Board of Internal Medicine's experience with the evaluation of clinical skills from 1971 to 1975 based on visits with the administrators of 166 residency training programs is described. Included are the evaluative methods employed by the programs, minimum standards of performance, and the benefits to training in internal medicine…

The goals of medical school curricula regarding the clinical competencies of graduating students were explored. Inventories listing 83 clinical skills were sent to U.S. medical schools and to volunteer clinical faculty members at the University of Utah School of Medicine. (Author/MLW)

A method for selecting which procedural skills should be mastered by medicine residents is described. Residents and faculty at the University of Nebraska College of Medicine were asked to select from a list skills essential to completing the three-year general internal medicine residency. (Author/MLW)

A model developed in Australia, designed to increase the reliability and validity of traditional final year examinations for medical students, aims to provide a profile of student performance over a range of defined competence categories. The level of competence is that expected of an intern. (Author/LBH)