Assessment Reconsidered: Finding the Balance Between Patient Safety, Student Ranking, and Feedback for Improved Learning

Trust, power and learning in workplace-based assessment: The trainee perspective

For trainees to participate meaningfully in workplace-based assessment (WBA), they must have trust in their assessor. However, the trainee's dependent position complicates such trust. Understanding how power and trust influence WBAs may help us make them more effective learning opportunities. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 17 postgraduate anaesthesia trainees across Australia and New Zealand. Sensitised by notions of power, we used constructivist grounded theory methodology to examine trainees' experiences with trusting their supervisors in WBAs. In our trainee accounts, we found that supervisors held significant power to mediate access to learning opportunities and influence trainee progress in training. All episodes where supervisors could observe trainees, from simply working together to formal WBAs, were seen to generate assessment information with potential consequences. In response, trainees actively acquiesced to a deferential role, which helped them access desirable expertise and minimise the risk of reputational harm. Trainees granted trust based on how they anticipated a supervisor would use the power inherent in their role. Trainees learned to ration exposure of their authentic practice to supervisors in proportion to their trust in them. Trainees were more trusting and open to learning when supervisors used their power for the trainee's benefit and avoided WBAs with supervisors they perceived as less trustworthy. If assessment for learning is to flourish, then the trainee-supervisor power dynamic must evolve. Enhancing supervisor behaviour through reflection and professional development to better reward trainee trust would invite more trainee participation in assessment for learning. Modifying the assessment system design to nudge the power balance towards the trainee may also help. Modifications could include designated formative and summative assessments or empowering trainees to select which assessments count towards progress decisions. Attending to power and trust in WBA may stimulate progress towards the previously aspirational goal of assessment for learning in the workplace.

Competency-Based, Time-Variable Education in the Health Professions: Crossroads

Health care systems around the world are transforming to align with the needs of 21st-century patients and populations. Transformation must also occur in the educational systems that prepare the health professionals who deliver care, advance discovery, and educate the next generation of physicians in these evolving systems. Competency-based, time-variable education, a comprehensive educational strategy guided by the roles and responsibilities that health professionals must assume to meet the needs of contemporary patients and communities, has the potential to catalyze optimization of educational and health care delivery systems. By designing educational and assessment programs that require learners to meet specific competencies before transitioning between the stages of formal education and into practice, this framework assures the public that every physician is capable of providing high-quality care. By engaging learners as partners in assessment, competency-based, time-variable education prepares graduates for careers as lifelong learners. While the medical education community has embraced the notion of competencies as a guiding framework for educational institutions, the structure and conduct of formal educational programs remain more aligned with a time-based, competency-variable paradigm.The authors outline the rationale behind this recommended shift to a competency-based, time-variable education system. They then introduce the other articles included in this supplement to Academic Medicine, which summarize the history of, theories behind, examples demonstrating, and challenges associated with competency-based, time-variable education in the health professions.