Assessment of competency in radiography students- a new approach

The assessment of the clinical performance and clinical competence of radiography students is problematic for many reasons, including the following: Significant variations between clinical centres in how students are assessed Internal variations within larger clinical centres, depending on who completes the assessment forms Clinical supervisors being uncomfortable with failing poorly performing students Different interpretations among supervisors as to what constitutes competence Confusion amongst supervisors who accept students from more than one university, due to variations in assessment paperwork. A national assessment tool has been designed and implemented in radiation therapy. Other disciplines to develop a national assessment tool in recent times have included speech pathology and physiotherapy. The discussion that follows describes the first stage of a project to develop a national assessment framework, including a national assessment tool, for the diagnostic radiography profession. The first stage of this project to develop a national assessment framework is a literature search, and this paper is based on the preliminary findings of this search. The aims of the search were to identify: The fundamental principles of assessment in higher education Factors arising from these principles that must be considered when designing a clinical assessment tool Articles were sourced using Educational Resources Information Centre (ERIC), and were chosen based on their relevance to the topic. Some were sourced directly from their authors. Each article was summarised, and sorted into major categories using NVivo8TM (QSR International Pty Ltd, Doncaster, Victoria, Australia) qualitative data analysis soft ware. These categories were: Function of education; issues related to assessment; types of knowledge and understanding; constructive alignment; teacher's role; competence; assessment (formative vs. summative and analytic vs. holistic); criterion and standards referencing; professional judgment. This was followed by a summary of the major categories.