Workplace-based assessment
Workplace-based assessment forms part of your FSP and involves observation and assessment of your workplace practice. It allows us to track your progression through training, ensuring you receive support to gain the clinical competencies and skills relevant to your training stage and to progress to Fellowship.
Different people are involved in your education and workplace-based assessment, including:
- your supervisor
- your medical educator
- external assessors
- your program officer.
You’ll receive feedback following each assessment, allowing you to reflect on your progress and plan additional learning opportunities with the support of your supervisor, ME or program officer.
It’s important that you schedule time for assessment, feedback and personal reflection.
Table 2. Structure of assessments
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Assessment format
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Who with
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When the assessment occurs - Term and week
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Time allocation
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What's required
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Early assessment for safety and learning (EASL)
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Supervisor
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GPT 1
Between weeks: 1-4
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8 hours
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- EASL pack
- online applied knowledge multiple-choice question
- case review
- case-based discussion (CBD) and/or random case analysis (RCA) (two cases)
- direct observations of your consultations (four cases)
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Case-based discussion (CBD) and/or random case analysis (RCA)
Mini-clinical evaluation exercises (Mini-CEX) x4
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Medical Educator
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GPT1
Between weeks: 15-25
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1 hour
2 hours
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- Submit two cases (CBD and/or RCA) to the FSP portal no later than five days prior to your booked WBA date.
- Talk to your practice manager to ensure no more than two patient bookings per hour. Find a suitable place in your consulting room to place your device so your ME can view the consultation as if they were in the room with you.
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CBD and/or RCA x2
Mini-CEX x4
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Medical Educator |
GPT2 & GPT3
Round 1
Between weeks: 1-12
Round 2
Between weeks: 13-26
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1 hour
2 hours
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- Submit two cases (CBD and/or RCA) to the FSP portal no later than five days prior to your booked WBA date.
- Talk to your practice manager to ensure no more than two patient bookings per hour. Find a suitable place in your consulting room to place your device so your ME can view the consultation as if they were in the room with you.
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Overview of assessment tools
The workplace-based assessment comprises:
- EASL suite of tools
- CBD and RCA
- Mini-CEX's
- oversight by the Progression Review Committee.
Early assessment for safety and learning
We understand that registrars enter their first general practice training term with varying levels of experience and clinical competency. Registrars come from diverse backgrounds, and some may be unfamiliar with working in Australian general practice. An EASL ensures that the supervision you receive is matched to your learning needs.
Information to guide your supervisor in making this assessment includes:
- completion of the EASL pack
- results from an online multiple-choice questionnaire that you complete
- a workplace-based assessment case review (CBD and/or RCA (two cases) and mini-CEX (four cases)).
These assessments are done in the first four weeks of GPT1.
EASL pack
The EASL pack contains key documentation and guidelines. A completed EASL pack should contain a:
- orientation checklist (pages 5-7 in the EASL pack)
- call for help list (pages 10-12 in the EASL pack)
- supervision plan (pages 15-16 in the EASL pack)
- teaching plan (pages 19-20 in the EASL pack).
Go through this pack with your supervisor and complete all the forms together. Once complete, prompt your supervisor to upload a copy to the Documentation section of your FSP portal.
You can find more information about the EASL on the FSP resources web page.
Multiple-choice questionnaire
The EASL multiple-choice questionnaire (MCQ) involves a set of timed online questions. There are 70 questions that cover multiple curriculum areas with a focus on patient safety.
You can access the MCQs via gplearning and must complete them in one sitting as the system will log you out automatically after a period of inactivity.
The MCQs are designed to help identify gaps in applied knowledge, especially in areas that are critical to patient safety. This information can assist your supervisor to identify areas where you require additional support and closer supervision.
Workplace-based assessment - Case review
- CBD and/or RCA - You need to submit two cases (CBD and/or RCA) in the Assessments and Forms area of the FSP portal and your supervisor will need to assess the cases and provide feedback.
- Mini-CEX - Your supervisor should observe a minimum of four consultations undertaken by you. This may be completed in one session or across multiple sessions, enabling you to make changes based on the feedback provided. If you have an off-site supervisor, these observations will need to occur via video conference such as Zoom or Microsoft Teams. After each observation, your supervisor needs to input their feedback into the FSP portal via the mini-CEX form.
Case-based discussion and random case analysis
These tools are designed to assess your clinical reasoning, management and decision-making skills using clinical cases that you’ve managed. Feedback is generally provided immediately after each session to support learning and reflection.
Your assessor will use a structured discussion format for the assessment. Targeted questions will allow you to demonstrate your competency across specified curriculum and syllabus areas. The assessor will explore in detail any issues relating to the case to identify if you have any clinical knowledge gaps.
Case-based discussion
For CBD, you’ll be asked to select a recent clinical case to present to the assessor, including providing clinical notes, relevant investigations or results, and details of referrals or preventive healthcare plans. You’ll present cases that you’ve been primarily responsible for and that represent a medium level of complexity, where clinical reasoning may be complicated by uncertainty and/or where decision-making requires consideration of multiple issues.
You might highlight aspects of the case for discussion, depending on your self-identified learning needs. Sometimes an assessor may request a case with a specific area of focus, particularly if it’s been identified that you need support in that area.
Random case analysis
In RCA, the assessor will randomly select a case from your consultation records to discuss. They’ll ask you to think about the case from different perspectives and discuss these through the lens of the curriculum and syllabus, in particular, the five domains of general practice. The development of your clinical reasoning will be explored through consideration of how a change in one of four contextual influences – the doctor, the patient, the problem and the system – changes the case.
RCA is helpful to ensure you explore cases you may not usually see in your day-to-day practice.
You need to upload two to three cases to the FSP portal using the case template, no later than five days prior to your scheduled WBA. This allows your ME time to prepare the discussion with you.
You're expected to participate in four CBD and/or RCA sessions every term. That is two in weeks 1-13, and another two in weeks 14-26, for GPT 1, 2 and 3.
Mini-clinical evaluation exercise
A mini–CEX involves observation of you performing a consultation. This is delivered remotely via Microsoft Teams by an experienced ME. You don't have to download any software for this.
This style of assessment can either focus on a particular competency area, such as professionalism, or specific clinical skills; it may be managed as a general observation. Find a suitable place in your consulting room to place your device so your ME can view the consultation as if they were in the room with you.
Once completed, your assessor can immediately discuss the consultation with you, providing feedback and ideas for further development.
You should talk to your practice manager to ensure bookings are made at no more than two patients per hour. This allows for a standard appointment time of 15 minutes, plus 15 minutes of self-reflection and feedback with your ME. Please make sure reception staff advise patients that a ME will be present during the consult, and obtain patients' consent.
Reception staff must print out a patient consent form on the day of the assessment and hand them to each patient as they arrive. All patients must sign the consent form prior to the start of the consultation. These are to be stored on the patient file at your practice.
You'll participate in eight mini-CEX exercises for each FSP term, except for GPT4. That is four in weeks 1-13, and another four in weeks 14-26, for GPT 1, 2 and 3.