Faculty and clerk perceptions of the effectiveness of the internal medicine clinical skills passport

The Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) requires documentation of third year medical students' achievement of clinical skills within each clinical clerkship. To meet this requirement, the University of Virginia School of Medicine implemented the use of the "passport method," a checklist of skills for students to perform under supervision of an attending physician. The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of the passport method to document students' clinical skills from the viewpoint of both faculty and students.;A case study approach was used focusing on the Internal Medicine Clerkship's general medicine setting. Two cases were presented: (1) the passport field-test, and (2) the first administration of the passport. Data collection employed interviews, questionnaires, completed student passports, and other documents. The results of each case were presented separately using a question and answer method as suggested by Robert Yin. This method allows readers to focus on their own interest and begin their own cross-case comparisons. The results concluded with a cross-cases analysis.;The findings suggest that the passport is relatively effective in documenting students' clinical skills. The results showed a slight increase in the number of students' skills documented from the field-test to the first administration. This study concludes that the use of the passport is expected to improve over time as faculty and students become more familiar with the passport. This study also contends that faculty and students need to view the use of the passport as a partnership. Attendings should be available to students to observe and sign the passports. Students should actively seek faculty signatures. Future studies are suggested to examine the use of the passport overtime.