Katharine Boursicot¹
John Norcini², Sandra Kemp³, Jennifer Williams⁴ and Riitta Möller⁵
1 Health Professional Assessment Consultancy
2 SUNY
3 University of Wollongong
4 University of New England
5 Karolinska Institute 

Over the last three years, several countries have cancelled their large scale OSCEs (USMLE – United States Medical Licensing Exam, MCC - Medical Council of Canada) and moved to using data from WBA to monitor and assess clinical and communication skills for progression purposes, i.e. for summative purposes. This is in contrast to other countries (e.g. the RCPCH, RCGP in the UK), where the use WBA has been modified to explicitly serve formative, learning purposes to the extent that they no longer refer to ‘workplace based assessment’ but rather Supervised Learning Events (SLEs). 

In this symposium, we will explore the pedagogical aspects and anticipated consequences of using WBA instead of OSCEs for formal assessment of clinical competence. We will discuss the implications of using tools designed for formative purposes, for summative purposes instead. We will also explore the impact of replacing OSCEs with WBA from the viewpoints of medical education, trainees and patient outcomes, as well as looking at possible unanticipated effects. 

Four speakers will address different aspects of the topic (10 minutes each) and there will be 30 minutes for audience questions, comments and discussion. 

References (maximum three) 

Touchie C, Pugh D. Cancel culture: exploring the unintended consequences of cancelling the Canadian national licensing clinical examination. Can Med Educ J. 2022 Aug 26;13(4):62-67. doi: 10.36834/cmej.73889. PMID: 36091740; PMCID: PMC9441119. 

Boursicot, K., Kemp, S., Wilkinson, T., Findyartini, A., Canning, C., Cilliers, F., & Fuller, R. (2021). Performance assessment: Consensus statement and recommendations from the 2020 Ottawa Conference. Medical teacher, 43(1), 58–67. https://doi.org/10.1080/0142159X.2020.1830052