Portfolio as a tool to evaluate clinical competences of traumatology in medical students

Abstract

This article investigates whether a reflexive portfolio is instrumental in determining the level of acquisition of clinical competences in traumatology, a subject in the 5th year of the degree of medicine. A total of 131 students used the portfolio during their clinical rotation of traumatology. The students’ portfolios were blind evaluated by four professors who annotated the existence (yes/no) of 23 learning outcomes. The reliability of the portfolio was moderate, according to the kappa index (0.48), but the evaluation scores between evaluators were very similar. Considering the mean percentage, 59.8% of the students obtained all the competences established and only 13 of the 23 learning outcomes (56.5%) were fulfilled by >50% of the students. Our study suggests that the portfolio may be an important tool to quantitatively analyze the acquisition of traumatology competences of medical students, thus allowing the implementation of methods to improve its teaching.

Keywords:

• competence-based education
• evaluation
• assessment
• teaching methodologies

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank all the medical students who participated enthusiastically in the study and also all the tutors who reviewed the portfolios during the rotations.

Author contributions

FSM and JGE designed the portfolios, and the analysis of portfolios was performed by FSM, FMM, DB, and JGE. The statistical analysis and first draft were made by MPGS, and the final writing and edition was mainly done by JGE, although all the authors have checked and approved the final version. All authors contributed toward data analysis, drafting and revising the paper and agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

Disclosure

The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.