Assessing Medical Students' Clinical Reasoning Competency Through the Simulated Case Conference / 医学教育

ABSTRACT

An oral examination using a simulated case conference format was conducted for fourth year medical students who took a practical course on clinical reasoning prior to their clinical clerkship. Although there were many disadvantages such as fewer cases and shorter testing time to use such examinations for summative purposes, we found that we could assess students' knowledge and presentation skills based on their logical reasoning. We could also comprehensively evaluate students' readiness for clerkship by applying the RIME assessment framework. We discovered the practical value of using the examination as a means of supporting learners who are facing difficulty in learning after we successfully used it to detect such learners and address their concerns. We hope that some elements of this simulated case conference can be used not only as a job preview but also as an assessment tool for pre-clinical clerkship education in other medical schools.