Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine has been named one of 10 medical schools to participate in a new initiative by the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) to advance competency-based education (CBE), a framework for teaching and learning assessment that allows students to advance based on their ability to master skills at their own pace and is designed to accommodate different learning abilities.
“This program is the first of its kind from the NBME, and one of a series of efforts by the NBME to partner more closely with the medical education community,” said Carla Lupi, MD, FACOG, KPSOM Associate Dean for Assessment and Evaluation.
In its first “Creative Community” project, NBME will focus on Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCE), which allow medical students to demonstrate clinical skills in a standardized medical scenario. OSCEs are designed to fairly and accurately gauge student competencies in communication, history-taking, physical examinations, clinical reasoning, medical knowledge and skill integration, and to flag areas that need improvement. All U.S. medical schools accredited by the Liaison Committee for Medical Education employ OSCEs to judge student skills and curriculum effectiveness.
“Clinical reasoning (how doctors make diagnoses and decide on treatment and management of patient care) is the fundamental cognitive skill for undergraduate medical education, and an area that medical educators in partnership with cognitive psychologists have been working to both elucidate and assess over the last several years,” Dr. Lupi added.
Under the direction of NBME, KPSOM will partner with 9 other medical schools to explore best practices in how to leverage simulation for assessment of this clinical reasoning, Dr. Lupi said. “This participation will definitely increase our visibility to the broader medical education community and provide one of our first opportunities to collaborate with other institutions to advance education.”
The other medical schools in the program are Duke University School of Medicine; Howard University College of Medicine; Morehouse School of Medicine; Southern Illinois University School of Medicine; University of Central Florida College of Medicine; University of Cincinnati College of Medicine; University of Connecticut School of Medicine; University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine; and University of New Mexico School of Medicine. Each institution will receive $150,000 over a two-year period for its participation.
