Identifying Medical Students in Difficulty Using Integration of Programmatic Assessment and Real-Time Evaluation Framework

Medical students are prone to stress due to the demanding and extensive medical education curriculum.Common stress factors are immediate change of environment, extensive curriculum, work overload, and fear of failure.However, it is seen that they do not reach out for help due to the prevailing social stigma that weak personalities seek emotional or psychological help. 1-3Therefore, medical colleges should formulate a framework to identify students facing difficulties.Early identification of such students would facilitate procedures to support such students accordingly.Early identification of such students can be done using the integration of programmatic assessment and real-time evaluation framework; and data for this purpose can be collected through portfolios.Programmatic assessment advocates continue data collection and longitudinal evaluation through immediate feedback.It is an approach which continuously collects required information about the learner and analyses it to give immediate feedback for continuous improvement.4 Real-time evaluation features real-time data collection and real-time reporting.It also has multiple cycles of evaluative activities for single-loop, double-loop, and triple-loop learning.