Work based assessment

1. Work based assessment A taster

2. Assessment is important “The assessment of actual performance in practice is essential to the quality management sciences. …Because of the events of the past decade; assessment faces a new set of challenges. The venue has moved from the relatively controlled and homogeneous settings of education to the uncontrolled and heterogeneous world of work. These serve to identify areas for improvement, signal whether goals have been achieved, and respond to the public’s increasing demands for accountability…This creates significant new challenges for the conduct and meaning of assessment.” Norcini, J. J. (2005). "Current perspectives in assessment: the assessment of performance at work." Med Educ 39(9): 880-9.

3. Important but difficult • Work based assessment is messy • Work based assessment creates work • Robust quality assurance is critical • Scientific rigour should underpin this • QA should be in the public domain • Work based assessment needs resources

4. Might make a difference • Assessment drives learning • Can assess areas traditionally difficult to assess • Provides feedback • Good assessment can make a difference to quality of practice

5. Work based assessments • Observe what actually happens in encounters with patients (miniCEX/DOPS) • Explore why a trainee managed a particular case the way they did (CbD/CSR) • Find out what healthcare colleagues observe about performance and on a day to day basis (MSF)

6. Work based assessment • Trainees and patients deserve assessments to be as robust as possible • Use available evidence base to implement and design work based assessment • Extend available evidence base by quality assuring work based assessment robustly