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Competency Assessment (competency + assessment)
Selected AbstractsBreaking New Ground in Juvenile Justice Settings: Assessing for Competencies in Juvenile OffendersJUVENILE AND FAMILY COURT JOURNAL, Issue 2 2005JULIETTE R. MACKIN ABSTRACT The field of juvenile justice has made great strides in developing a research base of effective practices and principles, including an understanding of risk factors and needs that contribute to juvenile offending. However, the research base and practice of systematic assessment has not yet fully incorporated youth, family, and community strengths. To address this need, three juvenile justice agencies in the northwestern United States participated in a pilot study to develop and implement an assessment tool (the Youth Competency Assessment) and process that would identify and utilize strengths to help balance the risk and needs focus of their assessment and case planning practices. This article provides descriptions and implementation strategies of the three pilot sites. The article concludes with recommended system changes and policy interventions to support ongoing utilization of this kind of strength-based tool in juvenile justice settings, and a clear set of recommendations for other communities wishing to implement strength-based assessment in their own agencies. [source] Setting performance standards for medical practice: a theoretical frameworkMEDICAL EDUCATION, Issue 5 2001L Southgate Background The assessment of performance in the real world of medical practice is now widely accepted as the goal of assessment at the postgraduate level. This is largely a validity issue, as it is recognised that tests of knowledge and in clinical simulations cannot on their own really measure how medical practitioners function in the broader health care system. However, the development of standards for performance-based assessment is not as well understood as in competency assessment, where simulations can more readily reflect narrower issues of knowledge and skills. This paper proposes a theoretical framework for the development of standards that reflect the more complex world in which experienced medical practitioners work. Methods The paper reflects the combined experiences of a group of education researchers and the results of literature searches that included identifying current health system data sources that might contribute information to the measurement of standards. Conclusion Standards that reflect the complexity of medical practice may best be developed through an ,expert systems' analysis of clinical conditions for which desired health care outcomes reflect the contribution of several health professionals within a complex, three-dimensional, contextual model. Examples of the model are provided, but further work is needed to test validity and measurability. [source] Assessment of psychiatric patients' competency to give informed consent: Legal safeguard of civil right to autonomous decision-makingPSYCHIATRY AND CLINICAL NEUROSCIENCES, Issue 5 2000Toshinori Kitamura FRCPSYCH Abstract Amendment of the Mental Health and Welfare Law in Japan will limit admission for medical care and protection only for those individuals who are incapable of giving consent to admission. This is a first in the history of the Japanese mental health legislation. By reviewing the law and psychiatric literature, it is argued that: (i) informed consent is a legal transaction that embodies the idea of an individual's right to autonomous decision-making in medical settings; (ii) health professionals have a duty to protect those individuals who cannot decide medical matters because of lack of capacity to do so; (iii) some patients are marginally incompetent so assessment of their competency is essential in protecting patients' civil rights; (iv) in order for a competency assessment to be reliable (and hence fair) the method should be psychometrically sound; (v) at the same time, in order for a competency assessment to be valid, the structure of a competency assessment should match the patient's psychological, cultural, and social background; and (vi) because informed consent is a process rather than a cross-sectional event, a competency assessment should be performed in everyday practice. The use of a brief and semistructured interview to assess patients' competency to give informed consent may meet all of the requirements described. [source] Resident Training in Emergency Ultrasound: Consensus Recommendations from the 2008 Council of Emergency Medicine Residency Directors ConferenceACADEMIC EMERGENCY MEDICINE, Issue 2009Saadia Akhtar MD Abstract Over the past 25 years, research performed by emergency physicians (EPs) demonstrates that bedside ultrasound (US) can improve the care of emergency department (ED) patients. At the request of the Council of Emergency Medicine Residency Directors (CORD), leaders in the field of emergency medicine (EM) US met to delineate in consensus fashion the model "US curriculum" for EM residency training programs. The goal of this article is to provide a framework for providing US education to EM residents. These guidelines should serve as a foundation for the growth of resident education in EM US. The intent of these guidelines is to provide minimum education standards for all EM residency programs to refer to when establishing an EUS training program. The document focuses on US curriculum, US education, and competency assessment. The use of US in the management of critically ill patients will improve patient care and thus should be viewed as a required skill set for all future graduating EM residents. The authors consider EUS skills critical to the development of an emergency physician, and a minimum skill set should be mandatory for all graduating EM residents. The US education provided to EM residents should be structured to allow residents to incorporate US into daily clinical practice. Image acquisition and interpretation alone are insufficient. The ability to integrate findings with patient care and apply them in a busy clinical environment should be stressed. [source] Teamwork Training for Interdisciplinary ApplicationsACADEMIC EMERGENCY MEDICINE, Issue 2009Bev Foster Safe healthcare delivery in the emergency department is a team sport. Medical educators seek efficient and effective methods to teach and practice teamwork skills to all levels of interdisciplinary learners with the goal of enhancing communication, insuring smooth clinical operations, and improving patient safety. We present a new interdisciplinary, health professions teamwork curriculum, modified from TeamSTEPPS, that is efficient, effective, and can be delivered using multiple teaching modalities. This flexible curriculum structure begins with a brief didactic core designed to orient the learners to team concepts and invest them in the rationale for focusing on teamwork skills. This is followed by one of four additional instructional modalities: traditional didactic, interactive audience response didactic, low-fidelity simulation (role play), and high-fidelity patient simulation. Each of these additional modalities can be utilized singly or in combination to enhance the learners' attitudes, knowledge, and skills in team-based behaviors. Interdisciplinary cases have been defined, piloted, modified, and deployed at two major universities across more than 400 learners. Interdisciplinary simulation scenarios range from team-based role play to high-fidelity human patient simulation. Assessment cases using standardized patients are designed for interdisciplinary applications and focus on observable team-based behaviors rather than clinical knowledge. All of these cases have accompanying assessment instruments for attitudes, knowledge, and skills. These instruments may be used for formative assessment to provide feedback to the learners and standardize the faculty's information delivery. If used in a summative manner they provide data for course completion criteria, remediation, or competency assessment. [source] 2 Incorporation of Audience Participation Technology into Resident Curriculum ReviewACADEMIC EMERGENCY MEDICINE, Issue 2008Brian Sayger We have incorporated audience participation technology (Turning Point) into our weekly curriculum review sessions. This audience response system consists of individual remote response keypads, a USB port-compatible receiver, and software which integrates into PowerPoint. Board-style questions are written into PowerPoint slides and presented by the speaker. Rather than selecting one resident to answer a question, all audience members select an answer using their keypad. The receiver registers the answers and immediately displays a graph of the audience's responses. Questions with more incorrect answers are discussed in detail while less time is spent on questions answered correctly by most of the audience. This encourages active participation for each question and eliminates the stress of a single resident giving an incorrect answer in front of a large number of peers. Audience members are engaged throughout the hour rather than concentrating only on questions assigned to them. Residents and students discover that challenging questions are answered incorrectly by a significant number of audience members. In a short time using this system, we've seen audience discussion increase dramatically. We plan to expand our use of this technology to other lectures. Speakers will administer end-of-lecture quizzes, immediately assessing how effectively their presentation achieved its learning objectives. All residents have an assigned keypad, and their percentage of correct answers is recorded during every session. This allows the program to monitor a resident's progress and to identify areas in which the resident may need more instruction. This system has potential applications for competency assessment. [source] | ||||||||||