The effects of student personal characteristics on the evaluation of clinical performance

Faculty evaluations of videotaped student case presentations were used to determine whether personal characteristics of students influence the evaluation of their clinical ability. Five first-year medical students were coached to present each of five prepared case presentations which varied significantly in content and organization. Fifteen experienced faculty teachers evaluated the presentations. They viewed the presentations in a sequence that allowed comparison of grades given to the same case presented by different students. Results show the ranking given each presentation depended as much on which student was doing the presentation as the content of the presentation. Grades given identical videotaped presentations by different faculty members showed little correlation. This study shows that the evaluation of clinical competence based on the student case presentation can be significantly influenced by the personal characteristics of the students and that faculty members do not appear to share common standards for evaluating case presentations.