Evaluating the effectiveness of undergraduate clinical education programs
John W. Ragsdale, Andrea Berry, Jennifer W. Gibson, Christiane Herber-Valdez, Lauren J. Germain, Deborah L. Engle, representing the Program Evaluation Special Interest Group of the Southern Group on Educational Affairs (SGEA) within the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC)
Abstract
Medical schools should use a variety of measures to evaluate the effectiveness of their clinical curricula. Both outcome measures and process measures should be included, and these can be organized according to the four-level training evaluation model developed by Donald Kirkpatrick. Managing evaluation data requires the institution to employ deliberate strategies to monitor signals in real-time and aggregate data so that informed decisions can be made. Future steps in program evaluation includes increased emphasis on patient outcomes and multi-source feedback, as well as better integration of existing data sources.