Assessing Clinical Competence

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The central function of medical care sys stems throughout time has been to provide societal institutions to deal with the anxiety and disruption caused by disease. This perspective requires that an assumption of the degree to which a medical practitioner has fulfilled societal obligations must include assessment of dimensions other than technical effectiveness. Measuring effectiveness requires two types of evaluation: the usual quality measures (technical effectiveness), and measures of performance on psychoso cial dimensions including measures of the extent to which a practitioner can positively affect the outcome of the disease process, and the effect of the practitioner's own behavior on patients. In addition, a societal view of assessing clinical competence requires measurement of the practitioner's efficiency in using finite resources. Finally, a societal view of assessing clinical compe tence requires that the evaluators include persons with expertise far different from that presented by the clinician-scientist.