Portfolio as a tool to evaluate clinical competences of traumatology in medical students

Fernando Santonja-Medina,1,2 M Paz García-Sanz,3 Francisco Martínez-Martínez,1,2 David Bó,1,2,4 Joaquín García-Estañ,5 1Faculty of Medicine, Department of Traumatology, 2Faculty of Medicine, University Hospital Virgen de la Arrixaca, 3Faculty of Medicine, Department of Education, 4Faculty of Medicine, University Hospital Morales Meseguer, 5Faculty of Medicine, Department of Physiology, University of Murcia, Murcia, Spain Abstract: This article investigates whether a reflexive portfolio is instrumental in determining the level of acquisition of clinical competences in traumatology, a subject in the 5th year of the degree of medicine. A total of 131 students used the portfolio during their clinical rotation of traumatology. The students’ portfolios were blind evaluated by four professors who annotated the existence (yes/no) of 23 learning outcomes. The reliability of the portfolio was moderate, according to the kappa index (0.48), but the evaluation scores between evaluators were very similar. Considering the mean percentage, 59.8% of the students obtained all the competences established and only 13 of the 23 learning outcomes (56.5%) were fulfilled by >50% of the students. Our study suggests that the portfolio may be an important tool to quantitatively analyze the acquisition of traumatology competences of medical students, thus allowing the implementation of methods to improve its teaching. Keywords: competence-based education, evaluation, assessment, teaching methodologie