ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses assessment in the several domains with particular reference to medical and health profession education. Cognitive and educational psychologists have made scientific advances in the study of thinking, perception, memory, learning, and teaching. Students learn content and can increase their intelligence, both admirable educational outcomes. Randomized study of neurology continuing medical education courses compared the effects of repeated quizzing—test-enhanced learning—and repeated studying on retention. Employing medical students, physician assistant students, and nursing students, researchers compared a spatial and temporal proximity of clinical content to basic sciences versus a purposeful, explicit teaching model that exposes relationships between the domains. A study sets out to determine which instruments exist to directly assess psychomotor skills in medical trainees on live patients and to identify the data indicating their psychometric and edumetric properties. The various formats of testing for cognition, affect, and psychomotor skills are viewed independently but are integrated in practice.
