Expert Consensus Guidelines for Assessing Students on the Social Determinants of Health

Teach Learn Med. 2022 Mar 16:1-9. doi: 10.1080/10401334.2022.2045490. Online ahead of print.ABSTRACTPHENOMENON: Assessment and evaluation guidelines inform programmatic changes necessary for educational effectiveness. Presently, no widely accepted guidelines exist for educators to assess learners and evaluate programs regarding social determinants of health (SDOH) during physician and physician assistant (PA) education. We sought to garner expert consensus about effective SDOH learner assessment and program evaluation, so as to make recommendations for best practices related to SDOH education.APPROACH: We used a Delphi approach to conduct our study (September 2019 to December 2020). To administer our Delphi survey, we followed a three-step process: 1) literature review, 2) focus groups and semi-structured interviews, 3) question development and refinement. The final survey contained 72 items that addressed SDOH content areas, assessment methods, assessors, assessment integration, and program evaluation. Survey participants included 14 SDOH experts at US medical schools and PA programs. The survey was circulated for three rounds seeking consensus, and when respondents reached consensus on a particular question, that question was removed from subsequent rounds.FINDINGS: The geographically diverse sample of experts reached consensus on many aspects of SDOH assessment and evaluation. The experts selected three important areas to assess learners' knowledge, skills, and attitudes a...
Source: Teaching and Learning in Medicine - Category: Universities & Medical Training Authors: Source Type: research