2019 Annual Conference

Health Professionals

Shared Concurrent Session (Approx. 12 or 20 minutes)

Health professional programs instruct adult learners in didactic and clinical formats. While didactic grading is well-established, clinical grading differs within programs types and between programs; a set of best practices does not exist. This session will explore grading practices in health professional programs.   

This session will be helpful to adult and higher education administrators, researchers, teachers, and practitioners in any program that requires an evaluation of clinical competence.  

Learners will be introduced to current models of clinical grading in various programs. Learners will understand the needs of the stakeholders involved in clinical grading. Learners will understand the complexities of clinical grading in health professional programs. Learners will understand Experiential Learning as an adult learning theory and its implications in a health professional program.

There is a need for student clinical evaluation in graduate medical programs. While there are accreditation guidelines in each profession that outlines the basic needs for clinical grading, how each program interprets and implements them varies greatly. As the number of professional programs and required skill levels of the graduates have increased exponentially, evaluation of the grading phenomena is required. This should take place from the standpoint of all stakeholders including administration, accreditation, faculty and students to determine efficiency, effectively and impact. This topic has been minimally approached in the literature.    

This will be a traditional lecture format with numerous examples of clinical grading in optometric and non-optometric programs. The audience will be asked to participate in an interactive question and answer session at the end.