When the Going Gets Tough, Look to Each Other: How Clerkship Education Committees Build Community and Facilitate Grading Decisions

Internal medicine clerkships are increasingly complex with multiple sites. Given the challenges with workplace-based assessment and LCME requirement for identical methods of assessment across sites, learning best practices in evaluation and grading standardization is of increasing interest to clerkship leaders. Using a clerkship grading committee is one strategy to help clerkship leaders deal with the challenging topic of grading while providing opportunities for building community. Grading (or competency) committees have been shown to help members develop a frame-of-reference for grading standards, allow clarification of a student's performance in the context of challenging cases, and provide participants with faculty development. The literature shows that less than half of medicine clerkships use some form of grading meetings. In this workshop, presenters will describe and analyze three internal medicine clerkship experiences with their grading committees, with a focus on the process of determining student grades. Presenters will describe different approaches to establishing or refining a grading committee, including goals, selecting members, delineating processes for grading, and measuring outcomes. Presenters will also discuss best practices and pitfalls with running clerkship grading committees, with the goal of providing audience members a framework of how to successfully establish and run a clerkship grading committee.