Pre-employment competency screening

Attitudes to pre-employment competency screening

“…Some UK graduates expressed concerns as to why they were being assessed, commenting that assessments had been performed recently (and more extensively) at medical school. This is a wider concern regarding the process that has been expressed by the directors of some foundation schools and programmes, nationally 1 . It should be noted that PECS has primarily developed at trust level because of concerns about the readiness of doctors to start work, 6–9 rather than as a purely educational process.…”

“…A questionnaire was designed by the study authors based on the literature, 4,5 as well as our previous work 1 . The survey was piloted for face validity within one trust and then adapted for the region.…”

“…In the North Western Foundation School (NWFS), trusts run their own assessments. Concerns have been raised regarding the validity of these assessments, particularly for screening unsuitable candidates 1 . The utility of assessments defined by van der Vleuten, 2 and later refined by the Postgraduate Medical Education Training Board (PMETB), 3 states that reliability, validity, educational impact, cost efficiency and acceptability are all important.…”