Procedures for establishing defensible programmes for assessing practice performance

Abstract

The assessment of the performance of doctors in practice is becoming more widely accepted. While there are many potential purposes for such assessments, sometimes the consequences of the assessments will be 'high stakes'. In these circumstances, any of the many elements of the assessment programme may potentially be challenged. These assessment programmes therefore need to be robust, fair and defensible, taken from the perspectives of consumer, assessee and assessor. In order to inform the design of defensible programmes for assessing practice performance, a group of education researchers at the 10th Cambridge Conference adopted a project management approach to designing practice performance..