title: GP supervisors assessing GP registrars – theory and practice.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  General practice supervisors are increasingly being expected to assess their registrars.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  In this article we explore the issues this raises for supervisors, and discuss the literature, which suggests that global assessments are the most accurate and feasible.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  We suggest the following guidelines for supervisors: inform registrars at the beginning of the term about how and when they will be assessed; be clear that the aim is to decide if the registrars' practice is safe for patients and appropriate for their stage of training; ob-serve registrars at work; make an initial judgement of registrars' performance; test the initial judgement on performance applying qualitative research methods to improve trustworthiness and reduce potential biases; use the working diagnosis of registrar performance to guide the level of support and clinical oversight needed and flag registrars who require further assessment by educational organisations for remediation decisions.
authors.affiliation: BM MMedSc FRACGP FACRRM DCH DRCOG DFFP GCTEd, Supervisor Research and Development Adviser, General Practice Education and Training, Canberra, ACT.
authors.forename: Susan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Wearne
authors.forename: James
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Brown
mesh_terms: D001315:Australia; D002983:Clinical Competence; D058006:General Practice / Q000458:organization & administration*; D058005:General Practitioners / Q000592:standards*; D006801:Humans; D011361:Professional Competence; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care / Q000379:methods*