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Residents as Teachers: Discrepancy in Clinical Evaluation Scores by Training Year

Objective:

1) To determine differences in clinical evaluation scores, both overall and by competency area, awarded to medical students by different levels of post-graduate physicians.

2) To determine which level of physician’s clinical evaluation scores most are associated with other more objective measures of performance (OSCE and Shelf scores).

Study Design: Clinical evaluations awarded by evaluators of third year medical students on an Ob-Gyn clerkship were analyzed by post-graduate year and were correlated with NBME Shelf and OSCE scores. Pearson correlation coefficient and repeated measures ANOVA were performed; alpha was set at 0.05.

Results: Interns awarded statistically significantly higher clinical evaluations scores than second year residents and faculty (p <.05). Average overall clinical evaluation scores of all levels of physicians were modestly correlated to the students’ OSCE and Shelf scores (r = .077-.314). Interns showed the highest correlation with Shelf scores (r=.368) when evaluating students’ medical knowledge on clinical evaluation forms. Additionally interns ratings of students’ professionalism showed high correlation with OSCE grades (r = .366). Faculty ratings of students’ physical exam skills showed modest correlation with OSCE scores (r = .276), which was higher than any other group for this particular area.

Conclusions: Results showed that interns’ scores were higher than other levels of evaluators, which ultimately has important implications for student grades. These findings suggest that perhaps faculty may be better equipped to evaluate specific competencies while residents may be better equipped to evaluate other competencies. Our results suggest that regardless of level, more training on student assessment is needed.

Topics: 2013, Student, Clerkship Director, Clerkship Coordinator, UME, Assessment,