Team Objective Structured Bedside Assessment (TOSBA): a novel and feasible way of providing formative teaching and assessment.
It can be challenging to teach and assess medical students successfully in the setting of a hospital ward using real patients. We describe a novel method of providing weekly formative clinical assessment and teaching to final year students on an acute medical ward: The Team Objective Structured Bedside Assessment (TOSBA). The TOSBA involves three groups of five students rotating through three ward-based stations (each station consists of an inpatient and facilitator). Each group spends 25 minutes at a bedside station where the facilitator asks consecutive students to perform one of five clinical tasks. Every student receives a standardised grade and is provided with educational feedback at each of the three stations. We report our 15-month experience using the TOSBA format to assess and teach a large number of medical students on a weekly basis. We discuss the advantages and potential drawbacks of our approach.
Miller
S D W
SD
Dept. of Clinical Teaching, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Beaumont Hospital, Dublin, Ireland.
Butler
M W
MW
Meagher
F
F
Costello
R W
RW
McElvaney
N G
NG
D004504:Education, Medical, Undergraduate; D004521:Educational Measurement / Q000379:methods* / Q000592:standards; D005240:Feasibility Studies; D030141:Feedback, Psychological; D006784:Hospitals, Teaching; D006801:Humans; D010361:Patients; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013663:Teaching / Q000592:standards