Enhancing Educational Excellence: A Comprehensive Guide to Assessment and Evaluation for Health Professions Education

April 18, 2024

In the realm of health professions education, where the ultimate goal is to produce competent and compassionate healthcare professionals, the methods employed to assess and evaluate learners play a pivotal role. 

At Acuity Insights, we understand the gravity of this responsibility. With decades of experience collaborating with medical education and other health professions programs, we have witnessed firsthand the challenges administrators face in optimizing assessment and evaluation practices to align with their educational objectives.

We are thrilled to present our Assessment and Evaluation Best Practices for Health Professions guide, aimed at enabling institutions to improve the efficiency of their assessment and evaluation processes. This guide will equip educational institutions with the knowledge and tools necessary to ensure the success of their learners and programmatic goals.

Within this guide, you’ll find actionable insights to implement within Assessment and Evaluation practices across both Didactic (or Pre-clinical) and Clinical experiences, including Competency-Based Education (CBE). These best practices cover a range of key topics, including:

• Capturing Assessment & Evaluation Feedback
• Form Management for Programmatic Assessment
• Increasing Evaluation Compliance and Efficiency
• Using Form/Grade Calculations 
• Using Low-Performance Flags
• Implementing Competency-Based Education
• Likert Scales in Competency-Based Education

Embracing a CBE Framework

Competency-Based Education (CBE) is a paradigm shift gaining momentum across various health professions, including:

• Medical Education (CBME)
• Veterinary Medicine (CBVE)
• Physician Assistant (PA)
• Dentistry and Oral Health
• Physical Therapy (CBEPT)
• Pharmacy (CBPE)
• Occupational Therapy

While you may perceive implementing a Competency-Based Education model as a daunting task, many programs are already well on their way to embracing its principles. Throughout our guide, we provide tangible tips to leverage your education program management solution to maximize the utility of their data within a CBE framework.

Our guide represents a culmination of years of experience, research, and collaboration aimed at elevating the standard of assessment and evaluation practices in health professions education. Whether you seek a comprehensive overview of assessment principles or targeted strategies to address specific challenges, our guide offers a wealth of resources to support your journey toward educational excellence.

Read the full Assessment and Evaluation Best Practices guide now.