Assessment in Health Professional Education Medicine Research

Assessment in Health Professional Education
NAME
INSTITUTION
COURSE AND PREFIX NUMBER
Assessment in Health Professional Education
Assessments in education relate to the concepts of applying varying approaches and techniques by teachers to assess, judge and record the academic preparedness, skill attainment, needs and learning advancements of students/trainees (Lakasing, 2013). Education in healthcare profession takes an extensive assessment of the health care students or trainees. Assessments help teachers/trainers to modify their teaching strategies and students to adjust their learning strategies (Ryall, Judd & Gordon, 2016). The interrelationship between assessment and learning is not as simple as often postulated. Rather, it is an interesting and vital process which shapes the future of the future professionals. This is a powerful tool which provides guidance to the people taking part in the education and evaluation of the healthcare professionals. Sharma et al. (2015) explain that assessment in medical education is a crucial part of the learning process of the professionals.
These professionals include; physicians, nurses, pharmacists, doctors and all other affiliated disciplines. These professions call for competent and effective training as any professional errors can be life-threatening. Lincoln (2013) emphasizes that it is only through an assessment that effective teaching of the healthcare professionals is achieved. Accordingly, The paper will look at assessment in health care professional education. It will delineate the conflicting principles which affect and inform some assessment practices and processes. Further, the paper will elucidate the pros and cons of various assessment strategies as well as their outcomes. Finally, it will give a clear comprehension of accountability for assessment.
Conflicting Principles of Assessment
Assessments are all about appraising and evaluating students and determining the strengths and weaknesses of the process (Alotaibi, 2014). It is a crucial part of education and especially in health care education. Assessment in education ensures competency in the students who will be later professionals (Golnik, 2014). For this reason, assessments must be founded on basic propositions, which act as the core values on which the assessments must be based. These concepts, which guide the basics of assessment are termed as principles of assessments (Taras, 2009). Learning assessments must always be based on the absolute belief that every student can advance and improve. Basically, learning assessments are founded on nine core principles. These are explained as follows.
Principle of Validity
The assessment tasks, activities and the used criteria must be valid. This means that these should adequately and accurately evaluate the learning outcomes on the students at the correct levels.
Principle of Inclusion and Equity
The tasks, activities,and criteria for assessment should never be discriminatory. Assessment should be fair and not favor any individual over another. This should all be done in line with the academic standards.
Principle of Consistency and Reliability
Assessments must be comprehensive and concise. The setting, marking, grading and task moderations...