What's the Evidence: Self-Assessment Implications for Life-Long Learning in Emergency Medicine

Abstract

Background: The 2012 Academic Emergency Medicine Consensus Conference, "Education Research in Emergency Medicine: Opportunities, Challenges, and Strategies for Success" noted that emergency medicine (EM) educators often rely on theory and tradition when molding their approaches to teaching and learning, and called on the EM education community to advance the teaching of our specialty through the performance and application of research in teaching and assessment methods, cognitive function, and the effects of education interventions.

Objective: The purpose of this article was to review the research-based evidence for the effectiveness of self-assessment and to provide suggestions for its use in clinical teaching and practice in EM.

Discussion: This article reviews hypothesis-testing research related to self-assessment behaviors and learning. Evidence indicates that self-assessment is inherently flawed when used in isolation. We review a multi-dimensional approach to informed self-assessment that can serve as the basis for life-long learning and development.

Conclusions: Advancing EM education will require that high-quality education research results be translated into actual curricular, pedagogical, assessment, and professional development changes. The informed self-assessment framework is a method that is applicable to teaching and practice in EM.

Keywords: clinical teaching; education research; emergency medicine; self-assessment.