Pim Teunissen, Faculty of Health Medicine and Life Sciences, Maastricht University, School for Health Professions Education (SHE)

Erik Driessen, Faculty of Health Medicine and Life Sciences, Maastricht University, School for Health Professions Education (SHE)

Both Pim Teunissen and Erik Driessen have extensively studied and published on the topic of WBA and workplace learning in medical education. They have ample experience in moderating workshops and have worked together as a team on many occasions. By background, Pim Teunissen is a hospital consultant in a large tertiary care teaching hospital and Erik Driessen is an educationalist who helped to develop WBA and portfolios for under- and postgraduate medical education. Between them they have a number of perspectives on the issue of making WBA work.

Workshop description

The number of tools for workplace-based assessment (WBA) in under- and postgraduate medical education have steadily increased over the past decade and with it conceptual models for their use have evolved. Evaluation studies, however, indicate that WBA in clinical practice does not always work as well as in they should in theory. Assessment procedures can become tickbox excercises and assessment for learning degrades to merely being perceived as summative assessment. This workshop will focus on these challenges by asking what practitioners and educationalist can do to make WBA work for learning.

Using their practical and scientific experience with this topic, the workshop moderators will build on the shared knowledge of workshop particpants to discuss what trainees and supervisors could do to make WBA work. Moreover, inherent tensions in the current approach to WBA will be addressed; the duality of service vs. learning and assessment vs. learning.

 The workshop will build on the participants’ experiences with and knowledge of WBA. Therefore, the majority of the workshop will be interactive. After a brief plenary introduction by the moderators, a round robin design will be used to have small groups of participants discuss four topics regarding WBA and workplace learning. After about 45 minutes of group work, a plenary discussion will allow group to report back what they learned.

 Participants will be able to:

– understand under what circumstances WBA can optimally support learning in practice,

– know what role individual supervisors and trainees can play in making WBA for them,

– better understand how inherent tensions in assessment at the workplace affect WBA.

 

Bibliographic references

– Barrett A, Galvin R, Scherpbier AJJA, Teunissen PW, O’Shaughnessy A, Horgan M. Is the learning value of workplace-based assessment being realised? A qualitative study of trainer and trainee perceptions and experiences: Table 1. Postgrad. Med. J. 2016;postgradmedj-2015-133917.

– van Loon KA, Teunissen PW, Driessen EW, Scheele F. The Role of Generic Competencies in the Entrustment of Professional Activities: A Nationwide Competency-Based Curriculum Assessed. J. Grad. Med. Educ. 2016;8:546–52.

– Gaunt A, Patel A, Royle J, Fallis S, Almond M, Mylvaganam S, et al. What do surgeons and trainees think of WBAs and how do they use them? Bull. R. Coll. Surg. Engl. Royal College of Surgeons; 2016;98:408–14.