Evaluation of practical clinical competences by students and professors by means of a portfolio

Abstract

The evaluation of the practical clinical competences that medical acquire during their hospital rotating shifts is rather unusual in the Spanish university. Even more unusual is the participation of the students in their own evaluation. Practical classes are compulsory but in many cases they are not subject of formal evaluation. In this research, by using a portfolio and a check-list, we aimed to know the percentage of students enrolled in the 5th year of Medicine Degree, that was acquiring the competences and learning outcomes expected during an established period of time in the subject of Traumatology. The evaluation was performed both by students and professors. The results indicated that globally, students declare a good degree of competences acquisition, whereas professors evaluated it as moderate. In almost all the learning outcomes, students provided a higher evaluation than professors, but no significant correlations between these perceptions were found. No gender differences were found in the evaluations and only in some occasions, slight differences were found among the different hospitals where students were being trained and coursing their practices. We conclude the importance of progressively improve the portfolio as a learning and a competence evaluation instrument, in order to match students and professors perceptions.