Assessment in Veterinary Medicine

Author: Sarah Baillie Last updated February 2010

Introduction

A two year project led by Professor Susan Rhind of the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, Edinburgh in collaboration with Dr Sarah Baillie from LIVE has been looking into various aspects of assessment in veterinary education. The project has been funded by the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons Trust and began with a workshop in Edinburgh in September 2006. Representatives from most of the UK vet schools and other key stakeholders discussed the current issues in assessment with particular reference to the final year exams.

Best Evidence Veterinary Medical Education (BEVME) Systematic Review

The initial aim of the project was to determine the evidence for the validity and reliability of assessment methods used in veterinary education. A systematic review of the literature was conducted in collaboration with the Best Evidence Medical Education (BEME) collaboration. An electronic search of databases and key journals was complemented by a hand search of the Journal of Veterinary Medical Education (JVME) and yielded an initial pool of 488 articles. After a filtering and selection process (flowchart) five papers were found that provided some evidence of the validity and / or reliability of an assessment method. These papers were subject to data extraction and coding by the project team. A report of the systematic review has been published:
Rhind, S.M., Baillie, S., Brown, F., Hammick, M., Dozier M. Assessing Competence in Veterinary Medical Education: Where's the Evidence? Journal of Veterinary Medical Education, 2008, 35(3): 407-411. (Abstract)

A Guide to Assessment Methods in Veterinary Medicine

In the second part of the project it was decided that it would be useful to produce a guide as a quick reference on assessment methods for those involved in the development and delivery of examinations for veterinary undergraduates and postgraduate certification. The guide is systematically laid out. For each assessment method there is: a short description, a list of the skills assessed, some practical considerations (e.g. resources), a discussion of validity and reliability issues, and a list of key references. The first section of the guide covers the methods commonly used in UK veterinary schools. The second section describes assessment methods used in medicine and other health professions that have been designed to address the challenges of assessing performance in a valid, reliable and feasible way when the trainee is engaged in clinical work. Downlaod a PDF of the Guide to Assessment Methods in Veterinary Medicine. The guide has been reviewed and is listed on MedEdWorld

Workshops

An HEA MEDEV funded workshop "Training the assessors for 2010 and beyond" will take place in 2010 (for further information contact Susan Rhind or Sarah Baillie).

Associated Links

Edinburgh BEVME project website