title: Self-evaluation in undergraduate medical education: a longitudinal perspective.
abstract: Although self-evaluation is crucial in the practice of medicine, few educators have formally introduced self-assessment into the undergraduate medical curriculum. However, students in the baccalaureate-M.D. degree program at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, must complete a self-evaluation at the close of every medical school course and rotation during the last four years of a six-year curriculum. In this paper, the authors examine the self-ratings of 211 of these students as they progressed through the program in order to discover trends in and correlates of the self-assessments. Although the students' self-evaluations and faculty members' ratings of these students' performances rose year by year, the relationship between the students' and the faculty's ratings decreased through time. Yet, results suggest that self-evaluation has educational merit as a measure of noncognitive abilities associated with clinical performance and as a stimulus to further learning and professional development.
mesh_terms: D003479:Curriculum; D004504:Education, Medical, Undergraduate; D004521:Educational Measurement; D005180:Faculty, Medical; D006801:Humans; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D012577:Schools, Medical; D012655:Self-Evaluation Programs; D013337:Students, Medical