The COMBELL project. Analysis of the medical clinical competence

BACKGROUND: The most frequent tests for evaluate medical education in Spain, do not analyze clinical competence. The aims of this project was to introduce a method for the assessment of clinical skills using the simulation methodology with standardized patients. METHODS: All 83 first-year medical residents were evaluated. Three evaluation exercises were used in all study. The first was 10 standardized patients encounters, the second was 100 multiple choice questions, and the third 60 clinical images. Sixty-four last year medical students were evaluated using the same 10 standardized patients. RESULTS: The global mean score for the residents was 56.7% for all the encounters, and was lower in physical examination and patients notes. The global mean score for the students was 57.1% and was also lower in physical examination. We did not find correlations between clinical competence assessment, multiple choice-questions, MIR exam and clinical images. CONCLUSIONS: Our results show that: this assessment method was successful; the clinical competence levels of our residents and students, and the lack of statistical correlation between this method and other methods, which, basically analyze cognitive capacities.