clerkship marks

[Guest medinvan]

Just wondering, are clerkships given actual marks or honours/pass/fail?

 

Also, when given an HPF mark (preclerk or clerk), can residency programs request actual numerical marks?

 

thanks

[Guest scrubbed]

This is from the medicine website

 

Based on what is below, I don't believe that any letter grade information appears on your transcript either from clerkship or preclerkship. As a result, I don't think the program directors would be able to request these marks. Most likely, reference letters would distinguish a "100" clerk vs. an "80" clerk.

 

"An H/P/F system is consistent with the Faculty's pedagogical philosophy: The current curriculum (adopted in 1992) is problem-based and strives to foster an attitude of self-directed learning, as well as small-group collaborative effort amongst students. An H/P/F grading scale allows sufficient evaluative leeway for students to feel free to explore areas of the curriculum that are of particular interest to them, without undue preoccupation with memorizing minutiae from didactic lectures. An alpha-numeric system has an opposite effect, encouraging students to spend their time concentrating entirely on what they think will appear on exams.

"An H/P/F system is more appropriate for clerkship evaluation: Assessing the performance of clinical clerks is somewhat subjective, and trying to do so within the finely stratified framework of the current alpha-numeric system is problematic. It is reasonable to expect a supervising physician to distinguish between poor, satisfactory,

and superior clerks. However, to expect preceptors to reliably discern 73's from 77's, or 88's from 91's is unrealistic, and unfair to both staff and students.

"The refined letter grade system fosters unnecessary marks anxiety and preoccupation with grades: An alpha-numeric grading system encourages medical students to focus entirely on what they anticipate being tested on, and to diminish breadth of learning. This increased preoccupation with grades is deleterious because it discourages the broadening of students' experience through such extra-curricular activities as tutoring high school students, student government, intramural sports, and student drama and music."

 

Summary of current grading practices

Honours, Pass, Fail standing in a course is based on a summation of evaluations within the course, using the weightings given within the Curriculum Directory for individual course evaluative components. Students are not necessarily provided with, or given access to, the numerical data which are used to determine component grades or the final grade. Students are provided with appropriate and specific feedback relating to their individual areas of weakness and strength, and are given direction and support in the best strategy for improving relevant knowledge, skills, and attitudes. The general principles applied to grading in Preclerkship and Clerkship are given in the sections of the Curriculum Directory pertaining to each of these curriculum programs. Details of the evaluation methods for each course are provided within the individual course descriptions specified in the section on evaluation for each course in the Curriculum Directory.

[Guest Kirsteen]

Hi there,

 

Some schools, e.g., UofC, include clerkship preceptor ITER comments on the Medical Student Performance Record as well as the P/F notation. Does UofT also do this?

 

Cheers,

Kirsteen

[Guest scrubbed]

Good question,

 

Though I'd quickly defer to an upper year who may have this information, according to the following page, the academic record does consist of "narrative evaluations of a student's academic performance used to judge his/her progress through an academic program."

 

Though I couldn't find any specifc information about the Dean's Letter, my best guess is that the faculty incorporates the narrative evaluations into the Dean's Letter. The transcript from what I've seen just includes the proprotionate credit for the course, based on the number of class hours, and the mark for the course.

[Guest cheech10]

My dean's letter had no narrative evaluation, just a summary chart of all our grades.

 

In clerkship, we get bubble sheets for our clinical marks with each category out of 5 (ie. unsatisfactory, below average, average, above average, outstanding) for each of the Canmeds roles subdivided further. These marks each appear on the dean's letter in addition to the HPF grade.

[Guest peachy]

My dean's letter had no narrative evaluation, just a summary chart of all our grades.

Does this include more details about preclerkship grades, or just clerkship grades? Could you explain further what a course grade looks like on the Dean's letter?

[Guest cheech10]

On the front is the summary chart of the bubbles I described, only for clerkship. On the back is the transcript-like part, eg. Structure and Function H, Psychiatry P, etc. It also lists any awards from the faculty on the back.

[tarzi]

Is the h/p/f system at toronto scaled such that only a certain percentage of students can get honors?

[ffp]

When reviewing files for CaRMS, I found that most clerkship rotations were given narrative comments, with sometimes P or F noted. If someone had to repeat a rotation, it was also noted on the file. Schools were quite variable as to how they would document this. Sometimes the files were very difficult to read. Basically, we looked for "red flags", failed rotations, as well as outstanding comments.

 

Some schools do have 'honours' for the clerkship rotations, but it is impossible for file reviewers to use this because not every school has honours, and those that do define it variably (ie. what qualifies for H at one school might not at another). Therefore... we don't place much emphasis on it - at least not in my program.

[Ollie]

Is the h/p/f system at toronto scaled such that only a certain percentage of students can get honors?

Over 80% is Honours, so theoretically everyone can get honours. It's a bit wishy-washy in clerkship with the clinical evaluations. We're scored on a scale of 1-5 on a bunch of different criteria. So as long as you get 4's and 5's then you're all good, but even a few 3's won't kill if you make up for them on the exams.

 

I think that they have recently changed the Dean's letters so that they now contain the written comments from clerkship evals (but a 4th year would have to confirm this).