Editor’s Note: In a recent webinar, MedHub examines how we look at resident milestone progression and shares her expertise on mapping the sub-competencies and elements in evaluation forms and the overall data collection used to support your Clinical Competency Committees (CCC). You can watch the full webinar, or follow along for a detailed summary in this post.
When creating resident evaluation forms, MedHub allows you to map sub-competencies and elements, providing you with comprehensive, objective data that will allow you to positively impact resident performance and, ultimately, provide you with valuable information that can help you continuously improve your program.
Create Easy-to-Use Evaluation Forms
When developing digital evaluation forms, MedHub helps you aggregate and interpret objective data, which aids in tracking resident progress. MedHub allows you to map individual questions against competencies, sub-competencies, or what MedHub calls elements (observable elements and attributes). While the milestones have changed, they are updated in MedHub and available for your programs to import.
Some things to keep in mind when writing evaluation questions with MedHub:
- Milestones are not intended to be used as evaluation tools. Instead, use language from the Milestones to design scaled, streamlined descriptors creating consistency and building efficiency for faculty completing the forms.
- Make the language objective, clear, and concise for simplicity. Consider using bullet points instead of full sentences.
- Access resources from the MedHub Community with the evaluation form sharing function and examine what similar programs are doing.
- Capitalize on your faculty members’ knowledge and experience to help with this process, as they have a strong sense of what is considered appropriate progression for trainees at specific PGY levels.
The milestone functionality can integrate into existing evaluation forms that are successful for your organization. Simply tag questions with your desired sub-competencies and elements to begin mapping milestone progress.
Map Milestone Progress
Once evaluation forms are created, mapped, and completed, you can begin accessing this objective, reliable data about your trainees. Mapping allows information to flow through to the competencies, sub-competencies, and elements you’ve identified.
Data can be mapped as broadly or granularly as your program chooses, depending on how your program wishes to track resident progress. Track to the level of detail that works best for your program.
Information can be viewed in multiple formats, giving a longitudinal view of each resident by each sub-competency and a peer average so you can see how they compare to peers.
Impact Resident Performance
A challenge with competency-based education framework is evaluating residents on their own trajectory; the goal is to prepare each resident for unsupervised practice, yet not all learners progress at the same rate.
MedHub provides you with objective data at your fingertips to make informed decisions regarding resident experiences and identify areas of individual growth for successful program completion. Using milestone mapping to monitor resident progress, you can:
Measure and monitor progress for individual residents by
- Showing what skills, attributes, and behaviors faculty members believe have been achieved within the milestone framework.
- Providing specific information about the number of questions mapped to each element and number of faculty members who evaluated a resident at a specific level. These values can then be weighed in making a final evaluation.
- Supporting more efficient CCC meetings by providing data that informs the development of individual learning plans.
Devise specific educational experiences to ensure exposure to areas of concern
- CCC’s can recommend specific faculty assignments or additional/specific rotations based on the interest or intended sub-specialty of the resident.
- CCC’s can easily identify if a resident is falling behind and form a remediation plan (such as individualized reading assessments with follow-up testing for gaps in content).
- CCC’s can suggest electives for specific training which is not part of the program’s typical curriculum but can be helpful for assessment or professional/personal development.
Include multi-source data to assess professionalism and interpersonal communication skills
- Being able to map additional forms (like patient evaluations and 360 evaluations) allows surgical staff, nurses, medical secretaries, and other professionals who hold critical information to inform on the development of residents.
Continually Improve Your Program
When effectively tracking and evaluating resident progress with MedHub, you also gain valuable information about your program and how you can continue to improve the resident experience. In mapping elements through MedHub, your program can:
- Examine your curriculum goals and objectives, ensuring that they align with the milestones that are in place for your specialties
- Assess what is working, for who, in what circumstances, and why, understanding the educational experiences and their efficacy fully
- Identify and address gaps in training or in capturing assessment data to ensure meaningful and authentic milestone reporting
- Create the opportunity to provide ongoing faculty development that is specifically related to the milestones identified as areas of potential program improvement
WHERE TO GO FOR MORE GUIDANCE
Curious about how you can begin improving the overall resident experience and your program as a whole with this detailed assessment management system? Request a demo with MedHub today.