Evaluating Competencies

This book offers a conceptual model for understanding the nature of legal competencies. The model is interpreted to assist mental health professionals in designing and performing assessments for legal competencies defined in criminal and civil law, and to guide research that will improve the practice of evaluations for legal competencies. A special feature is the book's evaluative review of specialized forensic assessment instruments for each of several legal competencies. Three-fourths of the 37 instruments reviewed in this second edition are new.

This book addresses challenges in the theoretically and empirically adequate assessment of competencies in educational settings. It presents the scientific projects of the priority program “Competence Models for Assessing Individual Learning Outcomes and Evaluating Educational Processes,” which focused on competence assessment across disciplines in Germany. The six-year program coordinated 30 research projects involving experts from the fields of psychology, educational science, and subject-specific didactics. The main reference point for all projects is the concept of “competencies,” which are defined as “context-specific cognitive dispositions that are acquired and needed to successfully cope with certain situations or tasks in specific domains” (Koeppen et al., 2008, p. 62). The projects investigate different aspects of competence assessment: The primary focus lies on the development of cognitive models of competencies, complemented by the construction of psychometric models based on these theoretical models. In turn, the psychometric models constitute the basis for the construction of instruments for effectively measuring competencies. The assessment of competencies plays a key role in optimizing educational processes and improving the effectiveness of educational systems. This book contributes to this challenging endeavor by meeting the need for more integrative, interdisciplinary research on the structure, levels, and development of competencies.

Offering a multifaceted, practical approach to the complex topic of clinical assessment, Practical Guide to the Assessment of Clinical Competence, 3rd Edition, is designed to help medical educators employ better assessment methods, tools, and models directly into their training programs. World-renowned editors and expert contributing authors provide hands-on, authoritative guidance on outcomes-based assessment in clinical education, presenting a well-organized, diverse combination of methods you can implement right away. This thoroughly revised edition is a valuable resource for developing, implementing, and sustaining effective systems for assessing clinical competence in medical school, residency, and fellowship programs. Helps medical educators and administrators answer complex, ongoing, and critical questions in today’s changing medical education system: Is this undergraduate or postgraduate medical student prepared and able to move to the next level of training? To be a competent and trusted physician? Provides practical suggestions and assessment approaches that can be implemented immediately in your training program, tools that can be used to assess and measure clinical performance, overviews of key educational theories, and strengths and weaknesses of every method. Covers assessment techniques, frameworks, high-quality assessment of clinical reasoning and procedural competence, psychometrics, and practical approaches to feedback. Includes expanded coverage of fast-moving areas where concepts now have solid research and data that support practical ways to connect judgments of ability to outcomes—including work-based assessments, clinical competency committees, milestones and entrustable professional assessments (EPAs), and direct observation. Offers examples of assessment instruments along with suggestions on how you can apply these methods and instruments in your own setting, as well as guidelines that apply across the medical education spectrum. Includes online access to videos of medical interviewing scenarios and more, downloadable assessment tools, and detailed faculty guidelines. An eBook version is included with purchase. The eBook allows you to access all of the text, figures, and references, with the ability to search, make notes and highlights, and have content read aloud.

This book examines the challenges of cross-professional comparisons and proposes new forms of performance assessment to be used in professions education. It addresses how complex issues are learned and assessed across and within different disciplines and professions in order to move the process of “performance assessment for learning” to the next level. In order to be better equipped to cope with increasing complexity, change and diversity in professional education and performance assessment, administrators and educators will engage in crucial systems thinking. The main question discussed by the book is how the required competence in the performance of students can be assessed during their professional education at both undergraduate and graduate levels. To answer this question, the book identifies unresolved issues and clarifies conceptual elements for performance assessment. It reviews the development of constructs that cross disciplines and professions such as critical thinking, clinical reasoning, and problem solving. It discusses what it means to instruct and assess students within their own domain of study and across various roles in multiple contexts, but also what it means to instruct and assess students across domains of study in order to judge integration and transfer of learning outcomes. Finally, the book examines what it takes for administrators and educators to develop competence in assessment, such as reliably judging student work in relation to criteria from multiple sources. "... the co-editors of this volume, Marcia Mentkowski and Paul F. Wimmers, are associated with two institutions whose characters are so intimately associated with the insight that assessment must be integrated with curriculum and instructional program if it is to become a powerful influence on the educational process ..." Lee Shulman, Stanford University

Since its original publication, Competence Assessment Tools for Health-System Pharmacies has continued to meet the changing needs of pharmacy directors and their staff. Designed as a complete human resource competence assessment program, this benchmark resource ensures pharmacies comply with the competence assessment standards of The Joint CommissionÔ. Newly updated and revised, Competence Assessment provides practical tools to assess and document an employee’s ability to perform assigned duties and meet Joint Commission human resource requirements. Save time and increase efficiency with this essential tool that supplements and reinforces staff knowledge in key competency areas. New to the Fourth Edition: Enhanced CD-ROM allows you to easily adapt many of the forms for your own practice including the job descriptions and orientation record. • Updated resources for customizing job descriptions, including job description, competence assessment summary, and performance evaluation templates for a Pharmacy Purchasing Technician. • Inclusion of a study guide for the emergency management chapter. • New chapters on intravenous to oral therapy conversion and antibiotic streamlining. • Expanded information in the hazardous materials chapter including the requirements of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) and practice recommendations from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and ASHP. • Updated controlled substances chapter including information about the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act. • New test questions in many chapters including use of a patient case report format for tests in the clinically-oriented chapters.

Assessing Competencies for Social and Emotional Learning explores the conceptualization, development, and application of assessments of competencies and contextual factors related to social and emotional learning (SEL). As programs designed to teach students social and emotional competencies are being adopted at an ever‐increasing rate, new measurements are needed to understand their impact on student attitudes, behaviors, and academic performance. This book integrates standards of fairness, reliability, and validity, and lessons learned from personality and attitude assessment to facilitate the principled development and use of SEL assessments. Education professionals, assessment developers, and researchers will be better prepared to systematically develop and evaluate measures of social and emotional competencies.

Designed to help medical educators implement better assessment methods, tools, and models directly into training programs, Practical Guide to the Evaluation of Clinical Competence, 2nd Edition, by Drs. Eric S. Holmboe, Steven J. Durning, and Richard E. Hawkins, is a hands-on, authoritative guide to outcomes-based assessment in clinical education. National and international experts present an organized, multifaceted approach and a diverse combination of methods to help you perform effective assessments. This thoroughly revised edition is a valuable resource for developing, implementing, and sustaining effective systems for evaluating clinical competence in medical school, residency, and fellowship programs.