Assessment in the legal and medical domain: two sides of a coin

Abstract

It has been such an honour to read the assessment papers in legal education that were written with an earlier paper of mine (C. P. Van der Vleuten & Schuwirth, 2005) as a frame of reference. The papers provide an excellent insight in a number of assessment practices in different law schools. Very striking were the similarities of the issues that are discussed from the legal domain to my own domain, the field of medicine. The papers are addressing notions of reflections, reflective practice, the importance of learning (and assessing) in context (either simulated or real) developing professional competences, definitions of professional competence, the relevance of general skills (professionalism, ethics, values, altruism, empathy, client-centeredness, managing themselves and others in work), and new approaches to assessment (journals, portfolios, extracted examples of work, observation, think-aloud in practice and holistic approaches to assessment). All these notions completely resonate with developments in the medical domain. For this contribution I thought of summarizing some recent developments in the medical domain having relevance to all these topics: competency frameworks, assessment of performance in context, reflection, and programmatic assessment. This is meant merely as an informative mirror on what happens in this other domain.