Medical education
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Multicenter Study
The effects of examination stress on the performance of emergency medicine residents.
Despite the finding that residents are exposed to significant stressors during their training, little is known about the impact of these stressors on performance. The objectives of this project were to measure the subjective anxiety felt by emergency medicine (EM) residents during in-training examinations, and to determine the effect of this anxiety on their ability to diagnose visual stimuli such as X-rays, photographs and electrocardiographs. ⋯ Emergency medicine residents report higher anxiety during in-training examinations compared with control conditions. Residents at all levels exhibited similar perceptions of anxiety. Junior residents performed better under stress, achieving higher scores during the in-training examination than during the control condition. The performance of more experienced residents was not affected by the stress condition.
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Many medical courses use standards-based assessment, usually reported by a restricted range of categories, but there is little evidence of its educational impact. This study aimed to evaluate the impact on medical student learning of changing to standards-based assessments reported by distinction, pass or fail. ⋯ The changes were associated with beneficial effects on deep motive, deep strategy, professional identify and intrinsically motivated study. There were no changes in competitiveness and minimal changes in amount of time spent studying.