title: Procedures for establishing defensible programmes for assessing practice performance.
abstract: The assessment of the performance of doctors in practice is becoming more widely accepted. While there are many potential purposes for such assessments, sometimes the consequences of the assessments will be 'high stakes'. In these circumstances, any of the many elements of the assessment programme may potentially be challenged. These assessment programmes therefore need to be robust, fair and defensible, taken from the perspectives of consumer, assessee and assessor. In order to inform the design of defensible programmes for assessing practice performance, a group of education researchers at the 10th Cambridge Conference adopted a project management approach to designing practice performance assessment programmes. This paper describes issues to consider in the articulation of the purposes and outcomes of the assessment, planning the programme, the administrative processes involved, including communication and preparation of assessees. Examples of key questions to be answered are provided, but further work is needed to test validity.
authors.affiliation: Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, Melbourne, Australia, Division of Educational Support and Development, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. stephen.lew@racgp.org.au
authors.forename: Stephen R
authors.initials: SR
authors.lastname: Lew
authors.forename: Gordon G
authors.initials: GG
authors.lastname: Page
authors.forename: Lambert W T
authors.initials: LW
authors.lastname: Schuwirth
authors.forename: Margarita
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Baron-Maldonado
authors.forename: Joelle M J
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Lescop
authors.forename: Neil S
authors.initials: NS
authors.lastname: Paget
authors.forename: Lesley
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: J Southgate
authors.forename: Winifred B
authors.initials: WB
authors.lastname: Wade
mesh_terms: D002983:Clinical Competence / Q000592:standards*; D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis / Q000379:methods; D004501:Education, Medical / Q000592:standards*; D006801:Humans; D010821:Physicians, Family / Q000592:standards*; D011787:Quality of Health Care; D015203:Reproducibility of Results