Impact of peer assessment on student wellbeing

Dear Sir

I read with interest the article by Iblher et al. (2015) regarding the use of peer assessment in medical student OSCE exams. While there appears to be an increasing body of evidence that peer assessment might be able to give accurate results about a student’s performance I am concerned about how the use of peer assessment may become more widespread, in order to cope with the pressures of finding appropriate faculty examiners as described by Iblher, without due consideration of potential effects on students’ wellbeing.

Little research has been performed into how the use of peer assessors in medical schools affects those being examined with regards to levels of stress and anxiety or relationships with peers. It is known that strong group cohesion is valuable for maximising medical student wellbeing and so it is important that peer assessment does not come at a detriment to this. Peer assessment in other settings within medical schools has been found to generate concerns regarding creating distrust between students and being unsuitable for situations in which there is competition between students (Cestone et al. 2008). Given that current UK medical students are ranked against each other as part of Foundation Programme job applications this is potentially worrying and would suggest that peer assessors are unsuitable for summative assessments. More research into how peer assessment influences feelings of competition and relationships between students is important before it becomes more widespread.

Declaration of interest: The author reports no declarations of interest.