The College of Optometrists has undertaken a review of the first two years of operation of the new Scheme for Registration, which was introduced in 2005 as a replacement for the Professional Qualifying Examination Part II (PQEII). The review group comprised representatives of the College, assessors, employers, examiners and supervisors.
The review considered feedback from those involved in the assessment process. Both supervisors and trainees welcomed the introduction of the work-based assessment, finding the structured format and the action plans that follow each assessment enormously helpful in consolidating their skills in a staged and organised way.
Following feedback from assessors and examiners, the College is currently refining the Work-based Assessment Framework to assist trainees in maintaining the skills they acquire early in the Scheme so that they achieve a high level of competence across all the GOC’s Stage 2 competencies at the end of the pre-registration period.
The following improvements to the Work-based Assessment Framework, designed to enable trainees to move confidently to the Final Assessment, will be introduced for trainees beginning the Scheme for Registration from 1 June 2008.
- Re-organisation of the Assessment Framework so that the sequence in which the competencies are assessed better reflects the usual order in which trainees gain experience.
- Movement of the broader-based competencies to the end of the work-based assessment, allowing assessors to test that trainees have maintained their competence in a range of tasks by sampling from these broader areas.
- Direct observation of key skills, meaning a more consistent approach among assessors and a better measure of trainees’ competence, focusing on how they manage actual patients.
The College recognises that each trainee only has one assessor throughout the work-based assessment. The purpose of the Final Assessment is therefore act as a double check by assessing candidates under examination conditions.
The College proposes to split the Final Assessment into two parts, both of which will be piloted during 2008 and, if the pilots are successful, introduced for trainees who enter the Scheme from 1 June 2009.
The first part to be piloted is an Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE), a method of assessment used extensively in other clinical disciplines. It assesses trainees across a wide range of clinical tasks, using patient-centred scenarios, and combines the judgements of a number of examiners. This allows for a wide sampling of skills and examiner judgements, thus increasing the reliability of the assessment process.
The second part to be piloted is the assessment of two common optometric procedures: Routine Examination and Contact Lens Fitting and Aftercare. The pilot will assess these in the trainees’ own practices, using a different assessor, and using patients unknown to the trainee.
Commenting on the review, Professor John Lawrenson, Chairman of the College’s Education Committee, said “The Scheme for Registration is now in its third full year of operation and it is timely to review our experience to ensure it continues to be up-to-date and fit for purpose. We will pilot the proposed changes to the Final Assessment with a small group of trainees later this year. The College believes that the combination of the three different assessment methods proposed by the review group will lead to a truly integrated assessment system, which is fair to candidates and which will continue to assure the GOC, employers and the public that those who pass can practice safely unsupervised.”