Employing clinical work sampling tool for monitoring the clinical competence among medical students

Abstract

The ultimate goal of medical education across heterogeneous settings is to produce a competent medical graduate. It is important to remember that this vision cannot be complete without incorporating observation, assessment, and documentation of the students' performance while they are involved in patient care throughout the duration of the course. The present review was planned to explore the utility of clinical work sampling (CWS) tool in the process of assessment of competencies. An extensive search of all materials related to the topic was carried out in the PubMed search engine, and a total of 15 articles were selected based upon the suitability with the current review objectives and analyzed. To ensure that the students are directly observed while at work, the use of workplace-based assessment tools has been strongly advocated owing to the high reliability, validity, feasibility, and better educational impact. CWS is an effective teaching-learning and assessment tool that involves observation and simultaneous scoring of different domains of patient interaction and management. In conclusion, the assessment method of CWS is based on the direct observation of clinical performance of the students in the workplace. Owing to the high validity and reliability of the tool, it is the need of the hour to employ the same as a part of clinical teaching and assessment in heterogeneous settings.