The IIME China Project
Background
Background information on the aims of the IIME, and an outline of the three phases of implementation of our project.
Phase I
Based on existing
work from many countries (GMC, CANMeds, Scottish Doctor, AAMC) an international
panel of medical education experts worked over 18 months to develop a
set of sixty minimum and essential outcome-based competencies for graduating
medical students. These competencies were written such that they could
all be measured, and were categorized into seven domains: 1) Professional
behavior and ethics 2) Scientific foundations 3) Communication skills
4) Clinical skills 5) Population health 6) Information management 7)
Scientific thinking. A meeting of international assessment experts subsequently
met to identify the best methods for evaluating these competencies, and
created a blueprint for the examination using three assessment methods: Multiple-choice
examination, objective structured clinical examination (OSCE), and longitudinal
faculty assessment. This blueprint was then used to create a set of examinations
in China. Full background information on Phase I can be found in
the "References" section of this site.
Phase II
Phase II focused on the application of Phase I in China, in which
the IIME was invited to examine all 7th-year (graduating) students at eight
leading medical schools in China using a 150-item multiple choice examination,
a 15-station objective structured clinical examination (OSCE), and a 16-item
faculty observation form used at least once per month for three months
on each student. Each assessment type measured multiple domains of
competence. Once this set of assessments was completed, the IIME
team had over 200,000 data points on graduating students at 8 schools,
but no standard against which to measure these outcomes. Using established
educational methods, student-level standards were set for these examinations.
Though this was the first set of international examination standards set
in medical education of which we are aware, the process went at least as
smoothly as our experiences with similar standard-setting processes at
our individual institutions. We then set international school-level standards,
using a novel process based on existing standard-setting technology. The
result of this work was a set of “report cards” for students,
schools, and the Ministries of Health and Education in China – providing
evidence of successes and areas in need for improvement. Full background
information on Phase II can be found in the “References” section
of this site.
Final Report of IIME Phases I and II
The final report of the first two phases of
the IIME project is available here:
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