Abstract
Objective:
To determine the methods used to rate medical clerks at Canadian medical schools and to investigate whether there is any uniformity across the country.
Design:
Survey by means of questionnaire mailed to the chairpeople of the departments of medicine at the 16 Canadian medical schools.
Outcome measures:
From the 15 schools that responded information was gathered on the descriptor, letter and numeric grades or rankings used to evaluate clinical clerks. A breakdown of the levels of descriptor grades was obtained along with the distribution of student scores according to these levels.
Results:
Descriptor grades were used at 10 (66.6%) of the 15 schools, letter grades at 1 (6.6%) and numeric grades at 4 (26.6%). In schools whose descriptor grades included more levels than “Pass” or “Fail” an average of 11% of students received the highest-level grade, 28% the second-level grade and 58% the grade for “acceptable” performance. There was wide variability in all these measures from school to school.
Conclusion:
There is a lack of consistency in the criteria used for rating clinical clerks at Canadian medical schools.
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Selected References
These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.
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