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Evaluating medical students' performance in a clinical setting

Nature Clinical Practice Neurology volume 3, pages 702–703 (2007)Cite this article

Most medical schools in the US have a required clerkship in neurology for which students spend 2–4 weeks during their third or fourth year of study seeing neurology patients in a ward and clinic. During the clerkship, students are expected to conduct a complete history and neurological examination, show understanding of important and common neurological diseases, know the basics of the common neurological tests, demonstrate clinical competence, and show that they can apply knowledge to actual patients by localizing the anatomical site of a lesion, creating an appropriate differential diagnosis including a most-likely diagnosis, and generating an evaluation and management plan.1,2,3,4

Evaluation of a student's mastery of the neurological examination is usually carried out via direct observation of the student by a faculty member or neurology resident. A few medical schools evaluate the complete patient interview by direct observation or by videotaping the patient encounter.5,6 Unfortunately, this evaluation schema focuses mainly on patient history, consumes time and faculty expenses, and is seldom performed more than once on a given student during the clerkship.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. LE Davis and MK King are Professors in the Department of Neurology at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine and Neurologists at the New Mexico Veterans Affairs Health Care System. LE Davis is also Chief of the Neurology Service at the New Mexico Veterans Affairs Health Care System, Albuquerque, NM, USA.,

    Larry E Davis & Molly K King

Authors
  1. Larry E Davis
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  2. Molly K King
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Larry E Davis.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information 1

Standardized form used to evaluate medical students during their clinical neurology clerkship. (JPG 983 kb)

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Davis, L., King, M. Evaluating medical students' performance in a clinical setting. Nat Rev Neurol 3, 702–703 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/ncpneuro0654

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