Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

A Practical Guide To Assessing Clinical Decision-Making Skills Using The Key Features Approach, Elizabeth Farmer, Gordon Page

Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health - Papers: part A

Aim  This paper in the series on professional assessment provides a practical guide to writing key features problems (KFPs). Key features problems test clinical decision-making skills in written or computer-based formats. They are based on the concept of critical steps or ‘key features’ in decision making and represent an advance on the older, less reliable patient management problem (PMP) formats.

Method  The practical steps in writing these problems are discussed and illustrated by examples. Steps include assembling problem-writing groups, selecting a suitable clinical scenario or problem and defining its key features, writing the questions, selecting question response formats, preparing scoring …