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CPD for clinical support roles: I assess trainees, prevocational doctors & students in the workplace

I assess trainees, prevocational doctors, and students in the workplace Scholar

Key areas to consider in planning your CPD include:

  • Learning and growing as an assessor, including your professional supports and networks
  • Enhancing your communication skills
  • Planning effective teaching and learning
  • Facilitating learning in clinical settings, including by promoting a fair and culturally safe assessment environment
  • Making evidence-based judgements
  • Enhancing your understanding of assessment concepts and practices, including constructive feedback conversations
  • Enhancing your understanding of assessment fundamentals, workplace based assessment practice and how to ensure its quality
  • Understanding and managing own biases

Practice evaluation (category 1)

  • Undertake a critical reflection on your assessment work and develop a plan for practice change. Potential topics for reflection include your WBA performance/experiences (ideally based on student/trainee feedback) or integrating what you have learnt during WBA skills training into your practice.
  • Ask colleagues and trainees/students to provide you with multi-source feedback (clinical support), with a trusted colleague collating the feedback and discussing it with you.
  • Ask a colleague to complete a peer review of educational practice, focusing on the assessment of learning domain.
  • Survey trainees on the clinical learning environment in which training occurs (in your department, hospital, unit or practice) to identify areas for improvement. Plan and implement changes and remeasure the learning environment to evaluate the changes made. Claim this under quality improvement project. See the resources section for survey tool examples.

Knowledge & skills (category 2)

  • Undertake a formal educational qualification and claim time spent doing this under formal courses.
  • Read peer-reviewed journals relevant to workplace based assessment (see key areas to consider) Learning and growing as an assessor, including your professional supports and networks; Enhancing your communication skills; Planning effective teaching and learning; Facilitating learning in clinical settings, including by promoting a fair and culturally safe assessment environment Making evidence-based judgements; Enhancing your understanding of assessment concepts and practices, including constructive feedback conversations; Enhancing your understanding of assessment fundamentals, workplace based assessment practice and how to ensure its quality; Understanding and managing own biases and claim this as journal reading.
  • Attend face-to-face or virtual learning sessions relevant to your WBA assessor role (for example: conferences, podcasts, webinars; see key areas to considerLearning and growing as an assessor, including your professional supports and networks; Enhancing your communication skills; Planning effective teaching and learning; Facilitating learning in clinical settings, including by promoting a fair and culturally safe assessment environment Making evidence-based judgements; Enhancing your understanding of assessment concepts and practices, including constructive feedback conversations; Enhancing your understanding of assessment fundamentals, workplace based assessment practice and how to ensure its quality; Understanding and managing own biases). Claim time spent doing this under learning sessions.
  • Assess trainee/student performance in the workplace using a structured form with constructive performance feedback. Claim time spent doing this under WBA of trainees.
The college welcomes suggestions on additional resources and topics for CPD on assessing trainees, prevocational doctors & students.

Learn@ANZCA

Use the links below to access additional support resources contained on the Learn@ANZCA platform.

Note: Resources located in Learn@ANZCA require that you first register before accessing.

ANZCA & FPM courses

ANZCA & FPM resources

External resources

Tools to audit the clinical learning environment

Anaesthesia-specific tools

MATE (Measure for the Anaesthesia Theatre educational Environment) for teaching in the OR:

ACLEI (Anaesthesia Clinical Learning Environment Instrument) for overall anaesthesia learning environment:

Pain medicine- specific tools

Dutch Residency Educational Climate Test (D-RECT):

Post-graduate Hospital Educational Environment Measure (PHEEM):

The college acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and recognises their unique cultural and spiritual relationships to the land, waters and seas and their rich contribution to society. We pay our respects to ancestors and Elders, past, present and emerging.

The college acknowledges and respects Māori as the Tangata Whenua of Aotearoa and is committed to upholding the principles of the Te Tiriti o Waitangi, fostering the college’s relationship with Māori, supporting Māori fellows and trainees, and striving to improve the health of Māori.

The college recognises the special relationship between the Pacific peoples of New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific, and is committed to supporting those fellows and trainees of ANZCA, and improving the health of Pacific peoples.