Making the shift towards competency-based medical education
11/26/2018
BRI’s Douglas Archibald, PhD, wants to know if our medical education tools are working the way they are intended. As part of a new study funded by the National Board of Medical Education, Edward J. Stemmler grant, he and Maria Palacios Mackay, PhD, of the University of Calgary will be investigating whether student evaluation mechanisms line up with new trends in medical education.
Historically, the standard in medical education was time-based. A time-based philosophy to teaching means that students are required to stay in their education program for a pre-determined amount of time. In this type of program, students are only periodically evaluated in the form of a final exam or research project. These evaluations typically have a large impact on a student’s final grade and determine whether they are ready to move on in their education.
But universities are starting to move to a new model of teaching. “There is this larger trend towards competency-based learning,” explains Doug, “and with that comes a shift in how we evaluate medical students and residents.”
Competency-based education is focused on being learner-centric instead of teacher-centric. The idea here is to have learners demonstrate the knowledge and skills required to succeed as medical professionals, and provide them with immediate feedback to encourage improvement. A competency-based model of teaching would thus remove the requirement that a student must stay at the same education level for a pre-determined amount of time. Instead, students would move forward in their learning once they demonstrate competency in the skills required of them—no matter how much or how little time this takes.
But the question still remains: what’s the best way to measure these competencies?
Universities are experimenting with a variety of approaches to assess whether students have acquired the skills necessary to become competent medical professionals. Most of these assessments involve creating more opportunities for students to receive feedback on their progress. This kind of evaluation can take many different forms; the shift is from summative to formative methods. The hope is that teachers can use these tools to get a sense of whether their student is progressing.
Doug and Maria’s research is focused on determining what types of assessments are the best tools to achieve competency-based learning. Together they will be exploring whether certain assessments are better suited to measure the competencies of students, and whether these tools actually contribute to an improved education for our medical professionals.