Hello All! We just got an email about clerkship grading. Many of you have had questions regarding this, but nothing had been decided at the time. However, this email has those answers!
tl;dr Hopkins SOM will continue to have P/F grading for all core and advanced clerkships for at least the next three academic years.
Full email:
Dear Classmates,
We are writing to inform you of an important vote on the grading policies for clerkships at JHUSOM.
For the past year, students from the Medical Student Senate have served on the 2022 Clerkship Grading Task Force. The charge of this task force was to prepare a proposal that recommended either continuation of pass/fail grading or implementation of an alternative grading system after August 6, 2022. This task force was not charged with determining how grades are calculated in each clerkship. Faculty stakeholders on the task force included OMSC deans, Clerkship Directors, Sub-Internship Directors, OAE, and OMSA.
The task force reviewed a variety of data, including published literature on outcomes from other institutions that have used pass/fail vs. tiered grading, results from inter-institutional surveys, learner outcome metrics such as shelf exams and clerkship grading, as well as the MSS survey on student clerkship grading opinions.
The final proposal from this task force was as follows: "The Clerkship Grading Task Force recommends that pass/fail grading for required core and advanced clerkships remain in place for at least the next three academic years." This proposal was presented at last month's meeting of UMEPCC and was approved by a formal vote of UMEPCC today.
This change will be accompanied by several ongoing analyses and piloted new forms of clinical assessment:
In the immediate term, OMSC is partnering with OMSA/ODIHE to create faculty and resident development around appropriate use of the current and future assessment tools, including the writing of narrative assessment.
In the short term (and in-progress), OAE/OMSA will survey recent graduates on satisfaction with match results and will also collect data prospectively, and OAE/Clerkship Directors will complete the modeling of a non-compensatory grading model in order to create a transparent criterion-based assessment model.
In the longer term, there are plans to pilot a competency assessment tool for clinical performance using entrustable professional activities (EPAs) which require direct observation. There are also plans to compare data from pass/fail and 4-Tier systems to assess whether a pass/fail system, at a minimum, does not cause harm to learner outcomes (e.g. attainment of knowledge and skills, residency match), and ongoing efforts to assess whether a pass/fail system improves wellness/decreases stress among learners.
