Performance features in clinical skills assessment: Linguistic and cultural factors in the Membership of the Royal College of General Practitioners examination

Roberts, Celia, Atkins, Sarah and Hawthorne, Kamila (2014) Performance features in clinical skills assessment: Linguistic and cultural factors in the Membership of the Royal College of General Practitioners examination. King's College London with The University of Nottingham, London. ISBN 9780956930514

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Abstract

This book is based on research looking at performance in clinical skills assessment

from a linguistic and cultural perspective, with a view to understanding why there are

such differential pass rates and giving suggestions on how this issue can be tackled.

It is both a research report and a guide to the sociolinguistic methodology used.

While the findings are based on a research project in partnership with the Royal

College of General Practitioners, they are applicable to many other medical settings

where standardised examinations of simulated consultations are used. More widely,

this research addresses a central paradox in institutional life – how to balance validity

in assessments and be fair to a diverse group of candidates in an increasingly diverse

society, while maintaining reliability with standardised and universal marking criteria.

It has been widely acknowledged that candidates from overseas fair less well in such

examinations. A close look at the interactions which make up these simulated

consultations shows that there are complex and subtle differences between passing

and failing candidates which cannot be explained simply as ‘language’ and ‘cultural’

differences and put in a box separate from issues of fairness. These structured

examinations, unintentionally, contribute to the weight of the assessment on overseas

candidates, particularly in how interpersonal effectiveness is judged both explicitly

and implicitly.

The research has identified a range of successful candidate strategies which form

the basis of a set of e–learning materials to be published by the RCGP. It also

suggests that aspects of the exam, notably the more subjective features of

interpersonal skills, are not best assessed in highly structured exams. This area needs

to be better defined, using a new analytic language, to debate how and where it could

be most effectively and fairly assessed.

Item Type: Book
RIS ID: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/739493
Schools/Departments: University of Nottingham, UK > Faculty of Arts > School of English
Depositing User: Atkins, Sarah
Date Deposited: 06 Aug 2015 16:56
Last Modified: 04 May 2020 16:57
URI: https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/id/eprint/29497

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