Standard 9: Teaching, Supervision, Assessment, and Student and Patient Safety
A medical school ensures that its medical education program includes a comprehensive, fair, and uniform system of formative and summative medical student assessment and protects medical students’ and patients’ safety by ensuring that all persons who teach, supervise, and/or assess medical students are adequately prepared for those responsibilities.
9.1 Preparation of Resident and Non-Faculty Instructors
In a medical school, residents, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and other non-faculty instructors in the medical education program who supervise or teach medical students are familiar with the learning objectives of the course or clerkship and are prepared for their roles in teaching and assessment. The medical school provides resources to enhance residents’ and non-faculty instructors’ teaching and assessment skills and provides central monitoring of their participation in those opportunities.
9.2 Faculty Appointments
A medical school ensures that supervision of medical student learning experiences is provided throughout required clerkships by members of the school’s faculty.
9.3 Clinical Supervision of Medical Students
A medical school ensures that medical students in clinical learning situations involving patient care are appropriately supervised at all times in order to ensure patient and student safety, that the level of responsibility delegated to the student is appropriate to the student’s level of training, and that the activities supervised are within the scope of practice of the supervising health professional.
9.4 Assessment System
A medical school ensures that, throughout its medical education program, there is a centralized system in place that employs a variety of measures (including direct observation) for the assessment of student achievement, including students’ acquisition of the knowledge, core clinical skills (e.g., medical history-taking, physical examination), behaviors, and attitudes specified in medical education program objectives, and that ensures that all medical students achieve the same medical education program objectives.
9.5 Narrative Assessment
A medical school ensures that a narrative description of a medical student’s performance, including non-cognitive achievement, is included as a component of the assessment in each required course and clerkship of the medical education program whenever teacher-student interaction permits this form of assessment.
9.6 Setting Standards of Achievement
A medical school ensures that faculty members with appropriate knowledge and expertise set standards of achievement in each required learning experience in the medical education program.
9.7 Formative Assessment and Feedback
The medical school's curricular governance committee ensures that each medical student is assessed and provided with formal formative feedback early enough during each required course or clerkship to allow sufficient time for remediation. Formal feedback occurs at least at the midpoint of the course or clerkship. A course or clerkship less than four weeks in length provides alternate means by which medical students can measure their progress in learning.
9.8 Fair and Timely Summative Assessment
A medical school has in place a system of fair and timely summative assessment of medical student achievement in each course and clerkship of the medical education program. Final grades are available within six weeks of the end of a course or clerkship.
9.9 Student Advancement and Appeal Process
A medical school ensures that the medical education program has a single set of core standards for the advancement and graduation of all medical students across all locations. A subset of medical students may have academic requirements in addition to the core standards if they are enrolled in a parallel curriculum. A medical school ensures that there is a fair and formal process for taking any action that may affect the status of a medical student, including timely notice of the impending action, disclosure of the evidence on which the action would be based, an opportunity for the medical student to respond, and an opportunity to appeal any adverse decision related to advancement, graduation, or dismissal.
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