LETTER TO EDITOR

Year : 2019  |  Volume : 10  |  Issue : 2  |  Page : 114-115

Exploring the data required for evaluation of a competency-based medical education curriculum in India

Saurabh RamBihariLal Shrivastava¹, Prateek Saurabh Shrivastava^2
1 Department of Community Medicine, Member of the Medical Education Unit and Institute Research Council, Shri Sathya Sai Medical College and Research Institute, Sri Balaji Vidyapeeth, Kancheepuram, India
² Department of Community Medicine, Shri Sathya Sai Medical College and Research Institute, Sri Balaji Vidyapeeth, Kancheepuram, India

Correspondence Address:
Dr. Saurabh RamBihariLal Shrivastava
3^rd Floor, Department of Community Medicine, Shri Sathya Sai Medical College and Research Institute, Ammapettai Village, Thiruporur - Guduvancherry Main Road, Sembakkam Post, Kancheepuram - 603 108, Tamil Nadu
India

Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None

DOI: 10.4103/INJMS.INJMS_31_19

• Document review: The document review encompasses the review of already existing documents and it usually includes vision and mission document of the course, specific learning objectives of the course, governance structure, documented role of different faculty members, timeline of events (and adherence to the same), curriculum document for CBME, minutes of meeting of board of studies or other institutional/departmental meeting, entrustable professional activities framed for the subject (are they correctly framed?), selected tools and framed rubrics, findings of the validation process, assessment (viz., standard operating procedures, frequency, and settings), portfolios or logbooks, written feedback obtained from students after assessment, written feedback from parents after parent–teacher meetings, and comparison with the existing literature. There is no special method of collecting the above-mentioned data, as they will be readily available in the department or in the administrative office
• Observation: Observation enables the collection of the information about the CBME course, as the planned activities are happening in the real time. The following things can be observed: sensitization session of faculty members/UG students about CBME or their expected roles and responsibilities, process of formulation of entrustable professional activities and the methods adopted to identify the priority ones, the process of internal validation (like how it is being done? How many subject experts involved? Whether the suggestions are incorporated or not), the process of external validation (viz., How it is being done? How many subject experts involved? How it is carried out – Questionnaire/Delphi method? Incorporation of suggestions), and the process of scheduled assessment (such as who all are involved? Whether students are briefed about what they are supposed to do? Where it is happening? On whom – real patients/standardized patients? What is done with the assessment further? Whether feedback is given to the students about their performance? Whether students are asked to reflect upon? Whether a shared action plan is developed?). The method of observation can be through participant's observation (the observer participates in the discussion and gets a clear feel about how things are progressing, but it might affect the results of the observation due to developing some bonding with the group) or through nonparticipant observation (the observer does not participate in the discussion and just observes how things are happening)
• Survey: It is a time-tested method and enables the evaluator to collect data from a large number of respondents in a structured questionnaire about all the variables. It can be used to collect the data from undergraduate students, department faculty members, administrators, medical education unit members, subject experts who were involved in the validation process, patients (in case of 360° assessment) or even the parents (provided they are aware about what their wards are being subjected to), etc. The method for doing survey can be either through a face-to-face questionnaire or through e-mail or through Google Forms or some applications (EpiCollect), etc. The advantage of this method is that if the respondents want they can remain anonymous and share the critical feedback. In addition, both quantitative and qualitative information can be elicited from the respondents
• Focus group: This method will be the best one to get a qualitative perspective. The only important thing is to design a valid primary stimulus question, which attracts people to be more vocal about their experiences. This can be done either by involving departmental faculty members or the undergraduate students (6–12) per FGD. The FGD among students can be repeated till saturation is achieved.

Table 1: Anticipated problems in data collection and potential solutions Click here to view

References

1.	Medical Council of India. Competency Based Under Graduate Curriculum. Medical Council of India; 2018. Available from: https://old.mciindia.org/InformationDesk/ForColleges/UGCurriculum.aspx. [Last accessed on 2019 Mar 27].
2.	Preyan Parekh K, Al-Dubbaisi H, Nainesh Patel V, Syed Abbas Rizvi K, Roy R. Utilizing progress testing in a competency-based medical education curriculum. Med Teach 2019;41:119.
3.	Dankner R, Gabbay U, Leibovici L, Sadeh M, Sadetzki S. Implementation of a competency-based medical education approach in public health and epidemiology training of medical students. Isr J Health Policy Res 2018;7:13.
4.	Shrivastava SR, Shrivastava PS, Ramasamy J. Systematically designing a questionnaire to assess the knowledge levels of postgraduate students & faculty about competency-based medical education. Int J Acad Med 2017;3:331-3.     [Full text]

This article has been cited by 1 The necessity, barriers and strategies to overcome the barriers in evaluation in medical education SaurabhRamBihariLal Shrivastava, PrateekSaurabh Shrivastava Journal of Dr. NTR University of Health Sciences. 2022; 11(3): 161 [Pubmed] | [DOI]