Principles of sound assessment practice in Health Professions Education

Abstract

In the broad sense, assessment is a systematic method of obtaining information or sampling data about teaching and learning in order to make specific inferences about characteristics which reflect student learning and skills acquisition. Assessment in Health Professions Education is vital as it impacts on healthcare delivery outcomes for patients and must be based on sound research evidence [1,2]. For any assessment method to be successfully used as an instrument of competency measurement, standard setting and blue printing must be done in advance [3].