Designing a Tool to Assess Medical Student's Clinical Competency in Pediatrics

Achieving to desired and final result in curriculum requiring observing principles and standards. This study with the aim of designing a tool to assess medical student's clinical competency in pediatric section of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences in 2012- 2013 was done.
This cross- sectional study was done in two phases. In the first phase, pediatric clerkship educational minimums in Medicine from logbook and with a survey of 15 pediatric faculties educational council of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences by census was designed as checklist. In second phase this checklist was provided to 27 faculty members of Pediatrics department (from three universities) and were questioned standard clinical exposures in these educational minimums of them. The average opinions of the professors were calculated.
Clinical educational rotations in 10 groups, including neonates, infectious, Gastro- intestinal, Nephrology, respiratory, Hematology, emergency, Pediatrics General, Endocrinology and Pediatrics outpatient clinic and 63 educationa minimum and standard clinical exposures rates for these educational minimums were designed as checklist. The face and content validity of the checklist was confirmed by the faculty members of the pediatric ward and its reliability was calculated using Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.82 through SPSS.
Considering the large amount of knowledge in Medicine and the necessity of learning the skills or knowledge as content selection criterion in curriculum, it is necessary to be considered these principles in designing core curriculum for improving individual's performance to future job tasks and community needs.