During the pre-clerkship curriculum
Students will undergo assessment of their medical knowledge, clinical skills, and professional behavior. All assessments should include feedback elements. This feedback provides students with the opportunity to reflect upon their performance in the areas of knowledge, skills, and professional behaviors and an opportunity to identify areas of strength or weakness. Students will receive this feedback in all courses in the following ways:
Formative feedback:
Feedback from facilitators during and after each small group session: This includes observations on a student’s presentation, interaction, and participation during the session. Feedback includes aspects of professional behavior and teamwork. Facilitators will assess each student using the rubric specified in the course syllabus. Students will receive regular feedback on their evaluations in the form of a Mastery report, which outlines students’ performance in every element. This allows students to assess their current professional development and identity and allows students and facilitators to work together to correct any deficiencies in performance.
Immediate feedback from facilitators and standardized patients (SP) during clinical skills small group sessions and hospital visits: Facilitators give feedback on what they observed regarding the student’s performance on history taking and physical examination skills. The SP provides the student with feedback about their experience during the encounter. Feedback is based on observable behaviors and quality of interaction, including how the SP felt, and what they saw and heard during the encounter.
Summative feedback:
Individual Mastery Reports: Each course in the basic sciences will provide a mastery report following each summative assessment. The mastery reports contain student performance data for the relevant categories for each examination (e.g., NBME content area and/or NBME physician task categorizations) and should be used by students to identify their individual performance strengths and weaknesses for the summative assessments. Individual mastery reports are available through the Examplify portal.
During the second year of the curriculum, students can request a one-on-one review of their clinical assessments. The primary purpose of a review request is to obtain feedback for self-improvement. See Clinical Skills Assessments Policies in the course syllabus for more information on how to request this session.
Narrative feedback:
A narrative description of medical student performance, including non-cognitive achievement, is included as a component of the assessment in each required course and clerkship whenever teacher-student interaction permits this form of assessment, and the following conditions are met:
- A single teacher interacting with a group of 10 or fewer students longitudinally for a cumulative 10 or more hours over the course of one Term
- The course is > 6 weeks
During the second year of the curriculum, students will receive narrative feedback relating to an assessed clinical encounter/experience. In the third year, narrative feedback forms a required component of each clerkship assessment.
This policy does not preclude or prevent narrative feedback under conditions that do not meet the criteria stated.