Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Evaluating The Effectiveness Of Undergraduate Clinical Education Programs, John W. Ragsdale, Andrea Berry, Jennifer W. Gibson, Christiane R. Herber-Valdez, Lauren J. Germain, Deborah L. Engle

Medical Student Education Faculty Publications

Medical schools should use a variety of measures to evaluate the effectiveness of their clinical curricula. Both outcome measures and process measures should be included, and these can be organized according to the four-level training evaluation model developed by Donald Kirkpatrick. Managing evaluation data requires the institution to employ deliberate strategies to monitor signals in real-time and aggregate data so that informed decisions can be made. Future steps in program evaluation includes increased emphasis on patient outcomes and multi-source feedback, as well as better integration of existing data sources.