Developing Tools for Clinical Performance Appraisal of Respiratory Therapy Students

An essential component of a competency-based curriculum is an appraisal system that provides students with clear and detailed feedback regarding their learning behavior and guides them toward positive behavioral change and specific, mutually agreed-on goals. Such a system must be based on a set of behavioral objectives against which a student can measure his own achievement. A student's performance in the clinical setting should be measured by persons who are trained in the consistent application of a valid appraisal instrument that serves not only to recognize deficiencies but also to establish goals for correcting those deficiencies. Among the tools that can be used in this developmental process of evaluation/feedback are behavioral contracting, modeling, and mutual goal-setting.