Competency-Based Approach In Medical Education Essay

According to Oxford dictionary, assessment is defined as the “action of assessing”.17 In the context of medical education it would be assessing the competence of a health professional which has to be relevant to the context and the setting in which it is applied.18
The huge amount of debate on the need for change in medical education has led to the discovery of many new expressions in medical education. Competency based approach is being mostly adopted these days in which the concept of assessment is not a mere one time end of term activity where the main stress is on assessing what the students have learnt (assessment of learning). Assessment in this approach is identified as a process which has extensive effects on students learning and it implies to use assessment for improving & increasing the learning process (assessment for learning).7 Competency based approach focuses on the certain skills or competencies which medical students needs to know .19,20 This approach follows loop of events which involves developing a curriculum based on the intended learning outcomes (ILO’s) and through which the competencies would be achieved.19,20 Similarly selecting a suitable teaching material, & teaching methods and examination methods to assess the ILO’s are other very important aspects of a successful outcome based approach.

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